Suffering Doesn’t Keep My Daughter’s Memory Alive
“Antidepressants help me disconnect from my pain, not from my daughter”
June — photo by author
Each morning for the last three years before I opened my eyes, my brain scanned my body for pockets of pain. Initially, it was purely a mental load of grief I carried, but over time it transformed into the physical. Until eventually, I’d wake up and automatically scan each body part starting with the crown of my head, hovering bleakly around my heart, then traveling to the tips of my toes.
Within the full body scan, I sorted the pain that emanated from my temples, chest, lower belly, and so often, behind my right knee. Thoughts of growing older, sicker, more tired, seeped in as my tear-filled eyelids closed, shedding wetness down my cheeks.
I’d think, “Dear God, help me through another day. How am I supposed to live like this?”
Since my daughter June was diagnosed with neuroblastoma four years ago, I’ve lived so uncomfortably both mentally and physically. Many days, I’ve fought for mere existence, never mind happiness.
Over time, the hopeless mental toll dominated and worsened my physical well-being. Strangely, never once did I think the two were interrelated. That the physical pain was actually a mental creation. Today I’ve learned if you have enough mental pain, anything is possible, as I’ve proven to myself.
After June died, I thought I was destined to live in this pain-filled shell of a body forever. Part of living out my final days was accepting my fate as a bereaved mother and that my life would never look like the one I had always dreamt. The motherly identity which briefly visited me when my first child was born, then left shortly after June came into the world, had long passed me by.
………………….
On May 25th 2021, June was diagnosed with cancer. My blissfully naive life as a mother (which is the way every mother’s life should be) was yanked away from me. In its exchange, I was handed a vast universe of suffering.
In this new universe, there existed no stars, only blackness. Every dream, wish, desire, anticipated moment, dispersed and disappeared into a deep chasm. Gone for all eternity.
I was stuck in the tar pit of negativity after losing June. The tar pit is cruel because like some fossilized prehistoric animal, it perfectly preserved me in my previous form. My femurs, ribs, and pelvis that cradled dying June in the last days of her life were part of the same body that had once created and birthed her. The same one that carried her into the world and gave her light. After June became sick, the original me still existed some where deep within my bones.
I’d become so painfully aware of the preserved me, when throughout treatment, I’d look in the hospital mirror and catch a semblance of my old self. The same freckled, sun-spotted face hesitantly looked me in my green eyes which were magnified by the putrid green tiled hospital bathroom walls.
Existentially, I was still me. I didn’t feel like me, however, I felt like a stranger in my own body living someone else’s life. Clearly, I was still me, so, where had I gone?
When June was diagnosed, it was if the universe decided my soul needed emergency surgery. Everything unnecessary was cut out. But with the bad, parts of the good were taken, too. I awoke to find myself severely altered and hyperaware aware of life’s cruelties. Then, I was thrown to the streets to figure out how to walk, eat, talk, and care for my family.
It was the beginning of the mental anguish taking a toll on the physical.
From what I understand now, it was the excruciating beginning of a rebirth.
………………….
Survival during and after treatment was ugly. It was messy. Chaotic. Disorganized. Disruptive. Then June died and it was as if my deflated soul departed and left the shell of my body behind. Organs that forgot their function rattled around inside my chest cavity and abdomen. My heart shriveled. My womb ached. My stomach hurt. The base of my esophagus burned from stress ulcers. My head thudded. My brain was challenged to form a sentence. My voice went away.
………………….
Since June’s death three years ago, there have been hopeful moments that have risen. But in the last year the pain transformed into something unbearably worse than it had ever been.
The odd thing was that I didn’t recognize how much worse it had become. I was living so deeply within my grief-stricken brain and broken body that I was numb. There was no joy or ease in my life. Small tasks such as doing a few dishes felt like I was scaling a mountain and expending the last of my energy reserves.
I’d agonize even when I’d watch my daughter so naturally throw a lacrosse ball on a pristine spring Saturday on a manicured green field, an otherwise relaxing and joyous moment. I’d sit with knots in my stomach as my brain gnawed at my latest worry. Usually, it came in the form of a random physical ailment and the way in which it was going to kill me.
I lived in a state of perpetual agony. The sun was too bright. The rain to light. My life so comfortably uncomfortable and utterly dim.
………………….
I became a junkie for whatever might offer reprieve. First, for years, it was wine. Then, when I felt that brought me closer to my deathbed, I went to bed without drinking at 9pm. I awoke with the sun and began my day with a walk. I delayed caffeine. I worked out, but not so much that I was depleted. I ate organic whole foods and reduced sugar intake. I drank plenty of water. I went to yoga. I eliminated alcohol. I replaced my workout clothes with organic cotton.
I read to my children at night instead of plopping a tablet in front of them. Daily, I meditated. In the morning. After lunch. Before bed. It lifted me. I began recording meditations specific to June’s cancer diagnosis. I shared them when they helped me. I was lifted a bit more.
Still, the anxiety compounded on the already existing anxieties and fears that I carried, keeping me awake at all hours of the night.
The triggers of an unknown caller or the threat of my child coming down with a virus was enough to take me down…for days.
Is this what life is supposed to be like after losing a child? I thought over and over again.
………………….
Every night, long after my husband and children had gone to sleep, I’d lay in bed, chewing my nails until they bled, watching vapid reality television. Wasting precious sleep on the inability to turn the television off and be alone with my thoughts.
As my sleep deteriorated, something worse brewed beneath the surface.
Suddenly, I had the answer. This must be what it feels like to be dying. Then, it became clear: I was dying.
It began with a pain in my back. Then my ribs. It spread to my lower abdomen and right hip. I was convinced I had endometriosis and tried to sell my sister on it. She was in disbelief. “You don’t have endometriosis,” she said. “What are your symptoms, exactly?”
That was the issue. My symptoms changed every day, therefore so did the disease. They rotated through my body. Pain radiated to my joints, mainly my knees. Sometimes, I felt a sharp pain in my lungs when I remembered to breathe. In my breathless existence, I circled the drain.
………………….
The lead that lined my life was deep. One layer of it was the painful memory of what June had endured. The cancer. The one I couldn’t see, but felt when I touched her belly.
June was gone, but I was carrying her pain into my future.
I started to believe that it wasn’t impossible that I had the very same disease she did. Her cancer grew on the adrenal gland and it was likely that mine would, too, seeing as though I’d been under an exorbitant amount of stress and the adrenals are responsible for the release of cortisol, the stress hormone. Bottom line, it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility for my child to be diagnosed with cancer and die, why would it be any different for me?
Four years after June’s diagnosis, there I was, trapped in my body, convinced I’d lived my best years and that my life was over.
My husband reminded me I wasn’t well. I reminded him of how much energy I spent “trying” and “doing” to feel better. It was an entire day’s work.
Then one day, when the physical aches and pains were so great, and I was sure it was the end, I called the doctor. Since I already knew my fate, it was time to face it. Just as I’d done with June, but maybe this time, I’d be more prepared.
I’d hit rock bottom.
………………….
When I arrived at the office several days later, I explained the area of my most recent and consistent back pain. Plans for my funeral floated around in the back of my mind.
The physicians assistant (PA) was empathetic and kind. As she started to tell me that she was writing me a script for an x-ray and referral to an orthopedist and pain management, I burst into tears.
“I think I need more help. Maybe that’s why I am really here. I constantly feel like I am dying.”
Breakthrough pain in the form of my pleas infiltrated the cube sized doctor’s office, where I sat vulnerably on an exam table in my least favorite role: the patient.
The wide-eyed woman on the stool in front of me suggested medication paired with a visit to the psychiatrist.
She didn’t see anything noticeable with my back.
It was that day, I finally gave in to all of my fears when on my way home, I stopped at the pharmacy and picked up a little orange bottle with a white label that read, “sertraline”.
………………….
Will I be able to write? I thought on my drive home.
Will I still process my emotions?
Will I be able to connect with my higher power or be blocked?
Will I still be able to channel the love I have for June so that I can live to my highest self and greatest good?
I was afraid antidepressants would ruin me by disconnecting me from self. That they would cut me at the emotional knees.
“Take the antidepressants,” a wise woman, who had also lost a child, once told me six months after June died.
………………….
It’s been a few months since I started the medication. Today, I am learning how to live with a renewed energy and zest for life. The little voice that nearly died inside of me after June did, the one who wanted to live, is very much alive.
Today I can see that my pain was so intimately tied to every aspect of my being, every waking thought and evening prayer. Now that I live without it, it’s become apparent that it’s a lifeless string tethered to deadweight which attached itself to my daughter’s fleeting life.
For three years, I willingly tied my ankle to it, only to fight it, try to escape it, and do everything to erase it, deeply believing it brought me back to her. And it did, but not in a way that allowed me to thrive.
The medication has helped me cope on a daily basis, and it has also given me something else. A real treasure that’s made of gold: the realization that to remain connected to June I don’t have to be suffering. I can remember her without tears and it is just as meaningful. The antidepressants have disconnected me from my pain, but not from June.
The desire to live has always existed within me and the antidepressants have bridged the gap between that desire and knowing I can actually do it. They’ve quieted the voices that tell me I am dying, so much so that I am able to see how alive I am.
As an added bonus, quite miraculously (or not), my physical pains went away. I don’t need an orthopedist or pain management anymore.
………………….
The power of the mind is much greater than I once believed. I’ve seen the proof that I can make myself sick or I can heal myself. Every day, I have the power to choose.
As for my pain, it’s right where it belongs, lodged in that tar pit I escaped a few months ago.
It is not me. It is not June. Pain is not a foundation of my love for her. Today, I am reconstructing my life so I can grow in ways that aren’t me solely channeling hurt.
What would my life have looked like if I continued to build it on the fragile bedrock of pain? I am not prepared to find out.
Inside these same bones, there exists pieces of the past me, but there also exists a future me who I can now envision.
I’ve been many versions of myself in this lifetime and I am not defined by only one. I am old, new, heartbroken, grief-stricken, filled with love, and today, I am finally at peace. I am still me with the medication and without the imminent looming of pain. I’ll always be June’s mother and I cannot wait to carry her with me into our bright future, as she is so positively part of everything I will experience and become.
