The things that flood you when you're hurting and missing someone who has died are memories. Details you don't want to forget or can't bear to think will disappear. So you chronologically catalog things. So nothing is missing. That's what I did. I wanted to remember everything she ever said to me. Even the things I probably should have forgotten.
Journal Entry from February 14, 2017
You’ve been gone for 15 days and I don’t think we ever went this long without talking to each other. I’ve had a migraine headache since last night and I just gave in and took something for it. I want to talk to you and a friend of mine told me to write a journal to you. Talk to you here. Erika another friend of mine sent me a beautiful carving of an angel holding a little boy and that’s how I picture you. With Kayan. The two of you wrapped around each other. Do you know how much I wanted to hold him like that? Have his little head on my shoulder like that? Smiling at me and loving me as much as I love him? He was yours and you were mine. We are this little trio of love and more than I wanted anything else in my life I wanted to watch him grow up. I wanted to watch you be a mommy to him. I’m so grateful you took so many beautiful pictures of yourself. There aren’t that many pictures of me. I don’t like how I look in pictures and Shawn, when she was here, was saying how much she loves how I look so young in pictures and I got all embarrassed. I don’t know why. I just do. I’m not the beautiful one, you are.
You look at me from these pictures and I want to reach into them and hold you close. Rock you in my arms like I did when you were a little girl and tell you all the secrets of my heart. I think you knew them already but Taryn who do I tell them to now? I knew this day was coming. I knew you would leave me early in my life but I didn’t want to feel this so soon. I figured there would be time. Time for five or six more shades of hair color. More epic fights and more, just more. I didn’t like arguing with you since it made things tense and awkward. We always got through it but I didn’t want to disappoint you. I felt like I did a lot. That whole fight that Sunday night when I was there in Texas visiting you that last time, hurt. How in God’s name would I know that two weeks from that night you’d be taken from me for the rest of my life? When Nikki and I first drove up and you were walking out to meet us I just couldn’t wait to kiss your tummy and feel the baby move. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. You gave me so many of those Taryn. The moment you came into the world was pure joy. When you first walked, when you first walked after the back surgery, on the beach in Florida, Knotts Berry Farm with the family, running on the beach after going to the San Diego Zoo, Lunch at the Denver Aquarium. So many times.
I love your smile. I love the duck faces too. Even Shawn said no one could pull off that duck face like you could. You were feisty and passionate and didn’t care if you bowled over someone else you always said what you felt and got angry about what you felt was an injustice. You didn’t like things to be unfair. You defended the ones you loved and I got that but sometimes you felt you had to defend them from me. I got the impression you didn’t like me much because you were so critical of how I said things and who I was. I didn’t want you to be a clone of me. I loved that you were different from me. You had your own opinions and thoughts and they were important to me. I did listen but not good enough sometimes. I should have let more of your ideas in. Really tried to listen more and not be “teaching” you how to be like me. My way wasn’t always the best way and you had some excellent ideas and points. I was learning that. Especially now that you were going to be a mother. We shared everything together. So much that sometimes I worried about your privacy with Adrian. He knew I knew things and it bothered him I think but he also knew we were good for each other because we could reach the right conclusions most of the time.
I wish I had come to your Broomfield apartment more. There just wasn't that much time. You were lonely there, and it was only an hour away. I should have gone there once a week and taken you out to lunch more. If I have any regrets it’s that. I needed to put this business on hold and be more present and in the moment with you and Christian and Garrison. It was hard not to be living with you in the same house but you and Adrian needed your life together. He needed his memories of you and I wanted to give him that. When you two lived here it was harder to have those special times a young couple could have together. I felt this pull like a magnet to be with you and it was hard to let that go and let Adrian have his time too. You needed that experience as much as he did. To be fun, silly, passionate and be “married” together. Take those fishing trips together and bond over being places alone. You did good choosing him Taryn. He is and was so good for you. He was the calm voice of reason in the face of some pretty crazy arguments.
I was so blessed with 27 years with you. It wasn’t supposed to be that long. I was only supposed to have 17 years and I got 10 more than I bargained for. We found your tumors at 17 and fought with fate for more time. I can’t express my gratitude for that extra decade of having you here. I loved giving you things. Pretty things. Showing up with pictures you loved and sending you things from Amazon. I wanted to buy everything you ever picked out. It made you so happy to get things in the mail and from delivery. It was fun for me to send them and know you were unwrapping things for the baby or something for you.
Christmas was sad and quiet this year without you and Adrian. I was so excited to have next Christmas and the baby to look forward to. I couldn’t wait to buy him toys and see him look at the Christmas tree lights. I know Nipsey and Ruby would have adored him and kissed him all the time. I wanted to see him wear that little t shirt and have Adrian hold him in his. You told Nicole you wanted one more baby after Kayan. Two children. It was a life you were starting and it scared me so much Taryn because in my heart I knew this was something you’d probably not be able to finish and I held my breath at the talk of the future. What was Adrian going to do alone with two children? Your body just didn’t want to cooperate and it never did. The tubal pregnancies were so awful and the tumor surgeries were even worse. All of it threatened to kill you and when you finally found out Kayan was coming and in the right place we were over the moon with happiness. This was the dream. This was right and good and would make all the pain and all the heartache worth it. This little baby miracle would be the balance to the universe and we were due some of that. YOU were due some of that.
Did you hear all the people talking in the hospital about Kayan being gone? You were heavily sedated but did you know? Did you know you delivered him and he didn’t live? Did you choose to follow him rather than stay here and try for another baby? Oh it would have been so impossible to console you after being this close to having your dreams come true. If you had woken up and learned he died that pain you would have felt would have broken me in half. It was too much. When I first went into your hospital room in Alamosa you looked wrong. You were not breathing by yourself and there were people all around you. The girl pushing air into your lungs and the tube down your throat. The bump on your belly was gone and you laid there so still and quiet with your eyes closed and your face swollen. When you started to come out of the sedative you would shake and convulse and it was frightening and I talked to you and told you I was there and to not fight the tube you could breathe through it. I don’t know if you heard me and I like to think you did. I never got to see your beautiful eyes ever again. The last time was when I hugged you goodbye when Nicole and I were leaving to drive back to Colorado on the Friday the 20th. I had no sense of foreboding. I gave you hugs and told you I was sorry for arguing with you at all, that I loved you and would miss you until I came back in a few weeks to be there for Kayan’s birth. I was happy that Adrian was home with you and you wouldn’t be by yourself at all. We’d timed it right so you wouldn’t be sad that we were going.
We spent the morning talking to you instead of leaving early and I’m so grateful we did that. There was never as much time as we needed to just talk. I kept telling you Nipsey needed to be neutered and he would be a better boy and not pee on the carpet anymore. I was going to help pay for that because money was always so tight with you both. It was getting better though. His job was paying more and you’d just started that new checking account with the credit union for his private stash so he had money of his own outside of what was needed to run the household. You kept your little budget book and did such an excellent job with the finances. Everyone has money challenges and it takes time to work all that out. You two would have worked through it all. You had that great basis for love and every time you tried to be without each other for a while you’d always come back. Always realize no one would ever love you like he did and he knew that about you too. I’ll always be so grateful for helping make so many things better between you two when I had the chance.
I remember when you lived here together and would have fights. He made such good sense and he was able to talk to you in ways that called you out and he didn’t let you win every argument he would fight for his opinions and for himself. He wasn’t a wimp. He still isn’t. He’s only 24 years old. He’s 25 this May and you would have been 28. He always seemed so much more mature for his young years. Now he has this to survive. I do know what it’s like to lose your love and that happened to me 14 years ago this month. That first few months is agony. Every thought, every breath is about that person and he will comb over every talk, every hurtful word and every time he wishes he would have been different.
Taryn, Adrian loved you so much. He loves you still. I would be willing to bet he wants more than to live without you, to just go to where you are with Kayan, and be a family. That is my biggest fear right now. That Adrian doesn’t want to live without you both. I didn’t want to live without Ray when he died..
I want to go into your apartment in Texas and curl up on the couch and sleep there. Walk around the apartment into the kitchen and touch things. Look at the food in the refrigerator at what you bought and what you had in the cupboards. See the dishes in the dishwasher and know that you made a fruit smoothie the last day you were there. The hair in your hairbrush and the last load of clothes in the dryer. Oh my God it would be awful and wonderful all at the same time to smell your pillow and wrap myself inside your new coat I just bought you that went all the way around your precious belly. “Thank you mommy” you said when I bought it for you. JC Penney, on sale. You went to get the car and I looked at more baby clothes and waited for you to drive the car over to where I was. I was so tired of walking and it was night time. We went over to Adrian’s firehouse to take him something and were going to go home after that. We had gone to Walmart and picked up the canvas drawers for the bookshelf. I got you a banana hanger and it was so cute. Some more towels, a rug for the bathroom floor. I hung up your whale picture in the living room and organized your boxes in the closet on the balcony. You loved Coco Puffs and said that when you ate them the baby would shimmy inside like he really liked it. He did that when you ate Nicole’s chicken enchiladas too. I don’t want to forget a single detail. I put away your Christmas Tree and you had some more things you wanted to use this year, things Patsy had sent you and it was going to be fun to get them all out this year and make the tree really really beautiful. We got rid of the wire crate for Nipsey because he pulled the bottom pieces apart and I was afraid he would cut his mouth on it so we went and got him a plastic kennel and it worked so much better for him. I got them a box of greenies and some new toys that they tore up right away LOL. It was fun watching them play with them though. They loved their deer antlers. I would take them outside to go potty and it was fun to walk Nipsey up and down the back of the apartment building. It was a little cold but I could see how you would get cold and not want to do it.
Nicole and I got things ready for the baby. Took things out of boxes and got rid of the wrapping. Set up the corner of the apartment for Kayan and put together the little dresser and the baby swing. I even went with you to Hobby Lobby and got a couple of frames for my father’s picture and the one Adrian drew so you could frame them right and put them on the wall for the baby. I loved the thought that Kayan was with my dad right then. They were together and happy until Kayan could be with us here. The colors were Grey and Blue like the ocean. All your colors were grey and blue. Nicole said you called her every day. You two were closer than ever and I’m so grateful she was there for you Taryn. So grateful you were close to her and got good advice from her. She wanted the best for you, she wanted you happy and that’s all that ever mattered to her. You are her “person” and I know that’s a bond that will go on forever. You were such cute little girls together. I don’t think she could have loved you more if you were her real sister. She and I talked a lot on the way there, 10 hours in the car and she was such a delight to be with, so mature and smart. I loved being with her because in some ways it was like being with you.
