There are some triggers that I can fully anticipate and plan around. I knew, for instance, that it would be hard for me the first time after Kendall’s death that I had to drive past the freeway exit to Huntsman. So I responsibly made arrangements for my sister to be the driver (we were headed together to a family reunion) and I breathed through it, albeit with my head down between my knees, and needing her to keep talking to me to keep me oriented and hopefully avoiding any flashback episodes.
I also knew that our extended family tradition of going around the table on Thanksgiving and everyone saying something they were thankful for would be difficult emotionally for me, where it would be so glaringly obvious that Kendall was absent. So I asked if this year we could start a new tradition, and instead we put up a poster board where everyone could write what they were thankful for on it throughout the day (and I could choose to participate, or simply avoid it).
Certainly other things like anniversaries and birthdays and holidays, I expect them to be hard and brace, or plan, accordingly. It’s the triggers that I don’t see coming, however, that are so difficult to navigate, that can knock me down or set me back in such painful ways. Sometimes it can be a deceptively simple thing, like a song, or a smell, that completely unglues me.
I recently had what was probably my worst trauma response yet, over….a salad, of all things. And boy, did I not see that one coming. For some back story, when the pandemic first hit and we were quarantining at home for months, I had the idea to celebrate silly (but real) national or world holidays each day to add some novelty to our routine. There were some crazy ones for sure, and we made a lot of fun, now treasured, memories celebrating them in the months before Kendall’s diagnosis.
Needing to quarantine again because of COVID brought back some hard memories and feelings for my youngest of when her dad was sick and we had to so strictly isolate for those seven months. I decided to reinstate the silly holidays until the end of the year, to get us through the boredom of quarantining and possibly alleviate some of the challenges associated with this holiday season.
On National Fast Food Day I agreed to take the kids out for fast food after work (a challenging undertaking when you are eating gluten and dairy free). We determined that Wendy’s could work if we went in person to place our complicated order, since we couldn’t make special requests online with sites like DoorDash or GrubHub. The timing was going to be tight, because I had my last self reliance class that evening as well. But worth it, because it was, after all, National Fast Food Day!
After a comedy of errors trying to get our (correct) order from Wendy’s, which I think we ended up having to do a dozen times before it was right (“No, you can’t just take the hamburger off the [glutenous] bun and make it a lettuce wrap, you have to cook a whole new burger and ONLY put it on the lettuce….”), we were finally on our way and it looked like I would just barely be able to make my class on time after dropping off the kids at home.
I had ordered a salad, and figured I had a few minutes to eat part of it on the way. Taking that first bite, though, I had a violent visceral reaction, felt horribly nauseous, and was suddenly brought back to that day at the hospital when Kendall had died. I had forgotten that that salad was the very same one from Wendy’s that my parents had brought me when they came with my kids to say final good-byes. I tried multiple times then to force down a few bites, knowing that I should probably eat something, but just the smell of it made me feel sick. And all day, as I sat next to that hospital bed, there was that stupid salad sitting across from me. I hadn’t realized how much I associated that smell and those tastes with everything that happened that day.
Fast forward to present day, and I was now late for my class (I’m never late, and I don’t miss classes I have committed to attending, even if I’m Zooming in from a hospital ICU room), so without taking time to process anything, and also now on an empty stomach, I headed to class. Once I arrived, though, it was pretty obvious that I was not OK. I started shaking uncontrollably, and couldn’t talk, and had to excuse myself from the class to go collapse on the floor of the bathroom and just lose it. Which then turned into a pretty severe asthma attack (that’s only happened one other time), and I didn’t have my inhaler on me. Thankfully one of the other class members came to check on me and was able to get to my car to retrieve my inhaler (dumb I didn’t have it on me, but I hadn’t needed to use it for months). And all because I ordered the wrong salad at Wendy’s. Sheesh.
You know what, though? I forced myself to eat that salad the next day. The whole thing. And it was terrible. I had to choke down every bite, and just the smell of it turned my stomach. But I did eat it. And despite how awful the whole experience was, and while I will probably never order that particular salad from Wendy’s again, my body did still receive important nutrition from eating that salad. And despite the awful feelings I had (feelings I still get) when I forced myself to drive past that Huntsman exit just a few weeks after that “first” difficult time, doing so did allow me to get to my destination.
So yes, this holiday season is going to be terrible. Already has been. Harder than I even expected, and in ways that have caught me by surprise. But perhaps there is still “nutrition” or benefits that I will gain from simply getting through the hard. My children will hopefully come away with some good memories from the times I forced myself to put up those decorations or still do that tradition, as difficult as it was for me. And there will only be one “first” Thanksgiving or Christmas to get through. I’m grateful for that.
I’m proud of myself for not avoiding everything that feels hard, or that I expect to be triggering. It’s empowering, in a way, to know that I can once again drive North on I-15, or go past that exit, or hear that song, or sit in a hospital room, or yes, even eat that salad. I’m proving to myself that those uncomfortable feelings will, indeed, pass. And so will holidays…..
(Here’s a picture from two summers ago on “National Strawberry Shortcake Day.” Can you tell how much Kendall loved his strawberries?)
