A Year of Discoveries

Two years ago tomorrow, at about 6AM, I stepped out of my garage door to be welcomed by an absolutely beautiful day. I had no idea that in less 12 hours my entire world would be turned upside down.

It was the day my daughter Lauren passed away from a carfentanyl and fentanyl laced heroin overdose. It was the end of a long struggle with mental health, anxiety and anorexia that lead to severe addiction. That single event changed us and changed our world.

Unexpectedly for Nereida, Evan and I this year, in many ways seems harder than the first year since losing Lauren. I think Nereida cited a very good reason, there are probably others too. With mental health and especially addiction there is always a whirlwind of chaos. There is a constant stream of current crises’ to be dealt with, immediately. Although the outward effect of that subsides quickly, it takes a long time for the effects of that to settle down in your heart and mind. In many ways after the loss of Lauren our lives slowly drifted back to normal, although, it is a new normal, in a temporarily altered world. Add to that the truth that after the sudden, unexpected loss of a deeply loved friend or family member, you are in emotional and psychological shock. Shock is a defense mechanism of our bodies to try to protect us. I think, one of the ways it does that is to deaden the amount of pain we can feel. As must happen, life moves forward, and it should, so we think the result is that this year we just “feel” LaLa’s loss more.

Nereida, Evan and I would like to express our deepest thanks to the many people who have encouraged us, prayed with and for us, sent little notes and gave us little gifts, many of those gifts have a pineapple on them. To date we have over 105 pineapple items. Every time we get one, we are strengthened, and we smile.

On the first anniversary of Laurens passing, Nereida encouraged me to start a blog. I had been talking about it even before Lauren died. I wanted to help hurting people and families facing what we were going through. With Nereida’s encouragement and some guidance from a pastor friend we did just that. On July 6^th, 2018 we launched We Chose Love. I am grateful for every person that takes the time to read these posts. For our first 12 months we posted 54 times (two introductory posts), had 14051 page views and 7121 individual visitors. Our prayer is that our words have helped and encouraged families facing struggles like ours. For the past few months Nereida and I talked and prayed about whether we would continue the blog. We have decided that although we feel, that by necessity, the direction and tone of the blog will change slightly over the next 12 months, we do want to continue to do whatever we can to help and encourage families loving someone with a mental health or addiction issue, and so we will continue posting on Friday of every week.

As with every major life changing event each year is a learning experience. This past year was one of changing, learning to understand, and moving into whatever God has for our future.

Healing after losing someone as close as Lauren was, and in the way we lost her is a process that takes time. You must be willing to journey through the grieving, for us, a big part of that journey is accompanied by our faith in Christ. How much time it takes really depends on who you are as a human being because we are all different. If you are struggling with the loss of someone you care deeply about, please make a comment on this post or send an email. Nereida hosts a grief recovery program that will be starting again the end of summer. We will keep you undated on the dates. You can read more about the program here.

In today’s post I would like to reflect on some of the things we have come to understand and experienced this year.

Two significant milestones:

To my complete surprise one of the hardest things I did this year was to take down Lauren’s bed. A very close second to that was seeing her headstone in place. For me it just spoke of the permanence of our loss, at least in this life.

Lauren left her style on everything she touched, that is one of the things we love the most about her. It started very early in her life, shortly after she went through a phase of wearing her brothers underpants. She would be unhappy with me telling you that, but I think she is probably laughing about it now.

Her room and bed were no different. I can still see her in my mind striking a beautiful pose like the

one to the right while saying “An LV on my arm, Starbucks in my hand and a pop of color”.

The day we dismantled the bed I had to remove a string of pineapple lights that were extremely special to Lauren. They were a gift from her mom and she always had them on. You can read about them in Talk to Your Kids as Early as You Can. Looking back at the last year of her life I think she may have found hope and encouragement in the warm glow they provided on her sometimes, hurting body and mind. Nereida and I spent many moments on that bed, talking, encouraging, hugging and sometimes crying with Lauren as she fought the battle of anxiety, anorexia and addiction.

A transitional day was the first day I visited her graveside without crying.

It wasn’t planned but one day as I visited her graveside, I was

comforted to know that she was now at peace with the Lord. I walked away knowing she was okay. I do not use this blog to speak directly about our faith, but if you would like to learn about the things that happened in LaLa’s life

that gives us that assurance you can click here. Our desire in this blog is to help people every way we can, and faith is a part of our story, it may not be part of yours and that’s okay.

One thing we have come to accept:

One day I was getting ready for work. As I did, I sat on the end of my bed looking at one of our dogs (we have two, a 40 lb Wheaten Terrier, and a 4 lb Morkie). Please don’t tell my wife but the Terrier is my favorite. He has had a very rough six months and, in all honesty, he is close to the end of his life. He is 15 years old and his name is Mr. Trump (we named him that because when we got him his hair had a striking resemblance to our current president so please don’t get upset with me, this blog is not about politics). He is by far the best dog we have ever had. He is special to Nereida and I. So much so that we have vowed not to get another dog since we know we will never get another one like him. As I looked at him that morning the thought overwhelmed me that in this life, as hard as it is to sometimes accept, all things come to an end. It is a huge part of life. Rather than focus on the loss, that morning I chose to begin focusing on the time we were given. I am not perfect at it but each day I get better. A few days ago, Nereida and I talked about how many of LaLa’s years with us were filled with many smiles and laughs. You can see it in the 5 min video that was shared at her memorial service.

One thing I must vehemently avoid:

Moving through grief is in many ways a decision and choice. Doing that does not mean you are not honoring and celebrating the life of that person you love so much. It does not mean that you are forgetting them, you cannot. What it means is that you daily make decisions and take actions to avoid paths that will take you into deep darkness. For me that happens in the form of a wave that crashes over me. It comes from many places: sometimes if I see a picture of Lauren, sometimes when I am thinking of a wonderful moment we shared together, and most times out of nowhere. Emotionally it crashes down on me fast and hard.

When I was a little boy my Dad saved my life two times. One was when a car door flew open while we were driving, he literally grabbed my hand just before my face hit the pavement driving at about 35 miles an hour. The second was on a summer day trip to Rhode Island. We were visiting friends that lived on the ocean. My Dad had taught me to body surf, and I was doing that near the shore. One particularly large wave came and somehow, I got caught up in the undertow. In that moment I remember feeling completely powerless as the water churned me over and over. I felt like I could not escape, and had a distinct sensation of sinking quickly. Then, suddenly, I felt my dad’s hand pull me up out of the water. I am not sure how he did it, but he ran from his spot on the beach and found me at the right place and moment.

When the wave of loss overwhelms me I reach for Gods hand which is always there. At that moment I focus on where Lauren is. If I don’t, then it can get extremely dark fast and I know Lauren would not want that.

As each day passes, we are learning to live life in an altered world with the hope of being reunited again. Thank you to all of you who have helped our family through another year of this difficult chapter of our lives. We are grateful.

As this year unfolds, we hope the blog will continue to help families facing the unexpected and find healing.

This weeks featured image is by our friend Brooke Shaden, it is called “Discoveries”. I especially want to thank Brooke for allowing us to use her imagery on our blog