Crushing Grief

I have not been in a good place for the last 24 hours.
My own head.
Can I get out now?

I really hate this. I can't even begin to tell you how much I hate it.

Friends and old girlfriends of my brother keep messaging me and telling me how much I meant to him. How much he talked about me and would brag about me. Thanks. I want to know this but then I don't. I feel like I wasn't a great sister. I should have been more involved. Should have called him more. Should have written more letters or emails. Should have should have should have.
We were closer than we had ever been but it wasn't close enough. I pray that my daughters keep close to each other as they grow. They will need each other and I know that it is hard to see that as you go about life.

People who know me know that I am not a crying person. I don't like to cry and definitely not in front of people but, dear lord, I have been crying alot.
I know it is to be expected and that it is good and cleansing and healthy and and and....
Yeah, everyone has been telling me that. If another person tells me that I may scream.

I don't want to be around people. They irritate me. Little things that have never really bothered me before (or perhaps they did but I was better able to deal with it) are driving me nuts right now. I have to bite my tongue and just take DEEP breaths.

The vultures have come out of the wood work. Matt's landlord wants new carpet and threatened me. My way ward half brother, who my mother gave up for adoption and I have met 3 times, is looking for money. Matt's ex-wife claims he owed her money from their divorce. GAHHHHH!!!! Leave me ALONE!

I am tired. Right after he died my sleep habits were changed, as in no sleep. Then as time went on it corrected itself and I was actually getting to sleep at decent times and waking up at a reasonable time. Now? Not so much. I think I was able to finally fall asleep at about 4 am and I woke up around 10:30. My poor kids have basically been schooling themselves for the last couple days. I want to snap out of this and go back to normal.

That anger at my mom? Still here and probably more so. When this is all said and done I will most likely have nothing more to do with her.
Ironic how just as I was writing this she called me and just made it more clear in my head how done with her I am.
My dad on the other hand, I have become much closer to. He calls me at least once a week instead of the once a month we had been at. A good amount of are conversations about Matt and the things that still need to be done but we do talk about our lives and are keeping each other more up to date about what is going on.

Most days I am looking forward to our trip (30 days!) but then grief hits me and I feel guilty about going or angry because he's not. I am truly hoping I can just let everything go for 10 days and enjoy our vacation. We had all been looking forward to this and now the girls are still excited but I am just not always there.

I am so scattered and annoyed. Even this post is annoying me. I hate that I am all over the place and not really making sense. I would so much rather be posting a humor blog than what this has become. When I started writing I was hoping to just write about my life with my kids and my weight loss trials but this has turned into a grief blog. 
Which maybe it will help someone else. Maybe there is someone out there looking for someone else going through the same thing...I am trying to look on the bright side. Not that losing someone is ever good but if me getting all this craziness out could help someone else than it MIGHT make it a little better.

Surprise!!

I am super excited!! After all the pain and horribleness of the last month I finally have something that is truly making me happy!

I have a HUGE surprise for my girls! GIANT, ENORMOUS, GINORMOUS even!

We are taking a trip to Disney World in April. My girls know this part already as we have been planning and saving up for it for 2 years. They knew why we didn't always get to go out to eat or why we didn't go see a lot of movies at the movie theater. They are counting down the days.
There was one small thing that my girls REALLY REALLY wanted to do while we were in Florida.
Swim with dolphins.
Unfortunately when I looked up the pricing there was just no way we could budget that. So the girls had accepted it and knew we were going to have a great time spending 4 days going to all the Disney parks.

We had been planning to do this trip with my brother before he died. He was going to drive down from North Carolina and stay at the hotel with us. He had been planning on taking Bri to Universal Studios one of the days we were there. Just the 2 of them. All of us were looking forward to spending a week with him before he was deployed again to the Middle East.
His death had put a damper on my excitement to go. I was starting to dread going and there is still that part of me that thinks I will be an emotional wreck while we are there. I am hoping that the surprise I have for the girls will help me through this.

We received an amount of money from brother's death and we have decided to use a part of it to take the girls to Discovery Cove and swim with the dolphins :)
It will be something they will never forget and hopefully something they can think fondly of Uncle Matt for. I know for me being able to give them this is making me feel lighter, less like Atlas, with the weight of the world on my shoulders.
So Friday during our vacation we will be swimming with dolphins, snorkeling, feeding birds, and hanging out at the secluded beaches. Also included in our tickets are unlimited 14 day passes to SeaWorld which was somewhere else my girls wanted to go but I just couldn't figure out how to squeeze out any more money.

We are keeping it a surprise and not telling them about it. So if you talk to my girls please don't say anything to them and pray for no tropical storms...

I truly cannot wait for this vacation. Even though I know I will be so exhausted from our week that I will need a vacation when we get home ;)

Weight Loss Wednesday - Grief

Haven't checked in with my weight loss in a couple weeks. Had to go back and read my previous blogs just so I could remember where I was at with my weight loss to see how much I have actually lost.
I had lost a total of 8 and 1/2 pounds before my brother's death.

Now for the new update. In the 3 weeks since my last post I have lost another 9 pounds. Normally I would be thrilled with this but I know a lot of the loss is from grief and stress. Not anything I have been doing on purpose. I haven't kept track of any calories. I haven't exercised. I have done nothing for my goals.

It was a crazy experience though. After Matt died and it occurred to me that I would need to wear something to all the services I went to my closet to find something. Yeah, nothing fit. In fact the outfit I was planning on wearing, a nice suit, made me look like Shamu. No joke. It literally hung on me. So needless to say a shopping trip was in order. My wonderful sister-in-law came to my rescue for the Army service. We had a blizzard that day and instead of having to drive to different stores to find clothes she went through her closet and found me some outfits. Then she and my mother-in-law helped us by taking us shopping on the following Saturday.

I am now in a size that I haven't seen since before my 3rd child was born. I do need to go get some new jeans since the few that I had are 2 sizes bigger than what I am now. They fall off my hips now.

So grand totals so far. Lost 2 sizes and have lost 17 1/2 pounds. Interesting that when I look at the numbers they seem huge but when I look in the mirror I don't see much difference.

Now that things have settled a little I hope to get back to actually tracking my calories again and working on exercising so I can lose the weight in a much more healthy way. My appetite has returned to a more normal size. I can see some changes in that I definitely get full much easier. This is going to make hitting my calorie goals that much harder. I had worked myself up to it before so I know I can do it again.

So little goals for this week - count my calories again and attempt exercise for 20 min 3 times this week.

Anger, Resentment, and a Singing Dog

I miss my brother. It's been a week since his funeral and although each day does get a little easier the thought that I will never see him again still tears at me with the same amount of pain. Not sure if that will ever go away.

Happy thoughts first. My brother's dog Eleanora has come to live with us. My girls are loving having her here. I love having that small living connection to my brother. I do not love that she is not fully potty trained :/
My brother had discovered that she sings. Only one song and only during the chorus does she do this. When you play Wild Horses by The Sundays Eleanora will howl. Not sure what it is about this song but it's true. So today during school I pulled up the song and got her going. The girls were laughing but I had to stop after the first time because you could tell Eleanora was getting upset and was looking around for my brother.
It's cute but I am not sure how often I can do that to her and to myself.

Anger.
I has it.
I am so angry at my mother. Not even sure anger covers the range of emotion I feel when I talk about her.
Disgust, embarrassment, rage, annoyance, resentment.
Some of it comes from the fact that she has NEVER hugged me during any of this. Really that's all I want and need. I need my mother's comfort. I as a mother have given it to my daughters and I know it has helped them. When I could see them start to fall apart I immediately went to them and hugged them. Showed them I loved them and supported them. The only time I didn't was at the funeral Bri read a poem and had a hard time getting through it. I stood up ready to go to her but I knew she wouldn't want me to comfort her in front of all those people. She is very private in her grief.
I know that my mother is hurting and the thought of losing one of my own children hurts horribly. I have hugged her and tried to give her support and comfort but hugging is a two way street. Sometimes you give a hug and sometimes you get a hug.
She has curled into a ball and I have hugged her, I have held her hand, and I have spoken what comforting words I can. I don't want to sound like I am whining because MANY people have come to comfort me. I have had a LOT of hugs (which if you know me you know I don't do much hugging) but there is something about a mother's hug that is special. It heals many things. That's all I want.

Resentment.
I have to say I resent my mom for being so weak. Again I know she lost her child but some times you have to suck it up and deal with things. During the entire planning I wanted her advice on things. I would call and ask for her opinion on the service or should we do this or that. Her response was always the same. I can't think I can't decide!
BUT then she would turn around and tell people I was not letting her help. That I was keeping her out of the loop. GRRRR!!!!! There are times I truly hate her. When she dies I am not certain I will feel this broken up about it.
She has put me through hell.

Two days after the funeral when I was dealing with Matt's bills, going back to work, a child who was vomiting, and all the other things of life, my mother decides she needs attention and threatens suicide. As if I didn't have enough on my plate as it is. Thankfully my father was still in town and was able to help with her but she made me so mad! While she was on the phone telling me that she was going to kill herself I said I couldn't deal with this and she informed me that I couldn't deal with anything. !!!What?!?! I went off on her. I was so ticked that she would DARE tell me that.
She ended up hanging up on me.
Don't blame her so much for that. I was telling her things she didn't want to hear.
Do you want to know the real kicker though? The real reason that she was threatening that?
She needed a ride.
It makes me sick.

Sorry for the rambling. I keep thinking it will get better but not so much. My thoughts are in such a jumble.

New Journey - New "Normal"

Buried my brother today.

Guess we go back to "normal" today.
Not sure what that means anymore. My life has a new "normal" now. Normal means I am an only child. Normal means no more laughing with my big brother about the crazy that is our mom. Normal means no more giant squeezing hugs from my teddy bear of a brother.

I am so tired.

Grief does funny things to your body. I never knew that. I studied the stages of grief in psychology classes in high school but I don't remember learning that it does physical things to your body.
Since last Friday when I found out Matt had died I haven't been able to eat right. I already had issues with food before this all started but since then I don't think I have eaten a full plate of food. When I do eat my stomach is so twisted in knots that the food doesn't stay long in my body.

Sleep is hard to come by also. I have had to resort to using a sleep aid to fall asleep most nights. Tonight I am going to try to go without it. I am hoping since I have had such a busy day maybe I can drift off tonight. Most nights my body is exhausted but my brain gets worked up as soon as I close my eyes. Memories start pouring in and the waves of sadness pile up and overwhelm me.

Headaches have also become very "normal" to me. I have suffered from migraines since I was 17 but normally they come quickly and then fade away within a day. I think I have had this headache (not really a migraine) since I found out.

Truly hoping I can write about my anger and resentments tomorrow. I need to get those thoughts out but I want to try and get some sleep before dealing with all that emotion.

Suffice it to say I made it through the hardest day of my entire life.

Plane-Side

Made it through the visitation tonight. It went really well I guess. Not sure what to expect from a visitation. Had a good turn out I guess. Considering it was Super Bowl night.
People came, talked, looked at pictures, and saw my brother.
My mother didn't come.

Not what I wanted to talk about tonight though.
Tonight I want to write about the plane-side honor.
On Friday my brother came home for the final time. I have to say it's really difficult to type that. I thought I was all cried out tonight but I guess I was wrong.

When we arrived at the airport we met with the honor guard at the base of the control tower. We waited for security to come and check our vehicles for bombs. My daughters thought that was pretty cool to see the german shepherd dog checking out the cars. After they decided we were ok we all got back into our cars and followed the police officer to the tarmac.
Once we arrived there we were directed where to park and we got out and stood by the car. The plane landed and pulled up to the terminal. It was freezing and loud! That was all my brain could think at that moment. How cold it was.
Once the plane had parked I was so thankful that the sun was behind the plane so I couldn't see the faces of the passengers on the plane. My grief at knowing my brother was in a casket lying in the cargo hold was open for everyone to see. I think if I had been able to see them staring at me might have put me over the edge.

Once the cargo hold was opened two soldiers climbed in. We waited as they prepared the casket and draped it with the American flag. The honor guard had lined up at the end of the hearse and marched to the end of the ramp that was hooked onto the plane. They waited while the soldiers inside the cargo bay finished their preparations. Once my brother's casket was ready they lowered it down the ramp and the honor guard picked it up. They carried it slowly to the hearse and placed it inside. Once it was secure the honor guard turned and marched past my family. The tears on the faces of these men and women who had never met my brother or my family touched me like nothing else. Seeing the airport employees bowing their heads and placing their hands upon their hearts was such an honor. My brother deserved it. He truly was a hero.

The honor guard climbed into their van and we got back in our car. We followed the hearse all the way back to the funeral home and they prepared my brother to be seen. Again we had an honor guard with us. The army truly has been with us every step of the way. You can see how much they care for their fallen comrades.

I have pictures of the ceremony and if I ever figure out how to add photos I will put some up. I am very thankful that my father in law came and took pictures because with the tears I missed alot of what happened.

Getting ready

Tomorrow begins the long days of Visitation and Funeral.

It's been a long week of trying to get things planned and thought out. I never realized how much went into planning a funeral before and I truly hope I never have to do this again.

The pain is still there although I am learning to push through. Choosing his grave site was both easier than I thought and harder. It was easier because when they showed us the area I knew exactly where it should be. It was harder because the thought of my beautiful and bright brother lying there forever is breaking my heart. I picked a spot that would be easy for my mom to go visit him and that was in a nice spot. I am thinking about her in all my decisions.

Her sisters have come to realize that and everyone of them has apologized to me for treating me so badly at first. They have also informed that they now realize how crazy she truly is and that they have only been hearing her side of the story for all these years. The thing is I have tried to talk to them about this before but I do try my hardest not to talk bad about my mom. Needless to say they are supporting me now. The sad thing is it's too late for my brother.

I am trying to figure out what to put on the tables tomorrow and I have had to go through pictures. It was pulling at my gut to see him and think that I will never actually touch him or talk to him again. I know this post is all over the place and it took a totally different turn than I thought it would go. When I started out I was planning on writing about how wonderful the Army has been. They truly have been.

I went to North Carolina to the base he was stationed at. They had a memorial service for him and it was amazing. They recorded the whole thing and I am so happy because at the time I was listening to everything but now it's hard to remember everything that was said. The one thing that about sent me over though was the Roll Call. I am so glad that our escorts warned us about it. Basically towards the end of the service they have everyone stand up and from the back of the room they start calling out soldiers. After their names are called they answer. They said about 5 names then they called Sargent Miller...silence. Sargent Matthew Miller...still silence. Staff  Sargent Matthew Norris Miller...nothing. All you hear are the tears falling from everyone in the room. It was powerful and painful.

However hard that was I know that tomorrow and Monday will be unbelievably worse. Hopefully I can write more about the visit to the base and the plane-side where they brought him home. I don't want to forget how I feel so I am trying as best as I can to write it all out but I can only do so much each time before it gets too hard.