The memories have left you broken and the scars have never healed

You always remember what you were doing, who you were with and the moment that something life changing happens. It’s like the groundwork to who you become, the dots to which lines will be added to in life.

Before my husband proposed, my brother and I were waiting for him in my car and I opened the glove box for something and there a ring box was. I quickly shut the glove box knowing full well I wasn’t supposed to see it and my brother and I never spoke of it again. My husband had planned a whole trip up to the Shenandoah Mountains (to this day I’m unsure why as I’m the last person you want to take hiking anyway, I’m about as athletic as an overweight smoker) but it was raining that day and I put up a big fight about not wanting to go, after seeing the ring box I understood why he was so persistent about going. We didn’t go and he ended up asking me in my parent’s living room in the house I grew up in. He came in, turned the movie I was watching off and got down on one knee and asked me to marry him on that rainy September day. I had a hint it was coming since I stumbled upon it, but it didn’t make that moment any less special, the moment I knew who I wanted to grow old with. That house carries a lot of memories with it and was only appropriate it hold the one that would start the rest of my life.

The night we decided we were ready for a family. It was December 10^th; I had stopped taking birth control at the beginning of the month and knew we should start trying around the 14^th because ‘normal’ people ovulate around day 14 of your cycle. We lit candles and made it romantic for our very first night of actual baby-making sex, which is much different then the “pull and pray” we’d been practicing since high school. We figured we would have good news to share the next month or so, little did we know the long emotional road that lied ahead of us, the road that ended up making us stronger, the same road that led me to being a mom.

The day I found out I was pregnant, was actually quite a surprise. It had been a 16 month wait and late periods and negative pregnancy tests were common occurrences, on a monthly basis. It was a Friday morning in late August and I was getting ready for work, I had a few pregnancy tests left over from the previous month and realized I was about three days late and thought, what the hell, I’ll probably ruin my whole Friday but the desire to pee on a stick was much needed that morning. I peed, brushed my teeth and went to throw the test in the trash but on this particular morning, 16 months of disappointment and reoccurring one pink lines, there were TWO pink lines, two dark pink lines. I kept the secret all day long because I was sure I would go home and the lines wouldn’t be there but I busted out the big guns with the digital and there is no mistaking the word “pregnant”. To this day I can still feel the excitement in my soul.

The moment I laid eyes on my beautiful baby girl, is completely unexplainable. It was a long wait, a hard labor and all of the pain went away the second I saw her. The dim lights in the room, the family anxiously waiting in the sitting area and the looks of pure admiration from my husband are etched into my being. It was 9:04 at night and as exhausted as I was after the nurses went to their stations and our families had retreated for the night, I couldn’t make myself close my eyes because if this was actually a dream, I didn’t want to wake up from it. She is the answer to my dreams and this unbelievable amount of love I have in my heart, began with her.

Loss, we all experience it. From our first pet passing to an older grandparent, death is a part of life. I was always lucky enough to not have lost many people close to me. A few great grandparents when I was little and a couple grandparents as I got older, you hear of people losing close ones on the news all the time and I was always really naive to it because I had never experienced the loss of someone I was really close to. It was a beautiful October day, we had spent the day at the pumpkin patch picking out the perfect pumpkins to carve. My friend TJ and I had texted back and forth a few times laughing about the night before when we all went out for drinks, he was anxious about turning 21 in a few days, the last text he sent was “all hell will break loose when I’m 21!”. We went back to my brother in laws house for pizza and I had just heard that TJ was in an accident, so I called his mom and the only thing she said was “He’s not breathing Stac, he’s not breathing”. These words haunt me to this day. I sat down, I couldn’t eat and we were in a house full of people and I’m not sure I was even able to breathe for the next 23 minutes. They were transporting him to Mary Washington Trauma where my sister in law was a nurse at, she assured me how good the trauma team was and I reassured myself that he would be ok, they will fix him right up and we’ll go see him tomorrow. The next phone call I got was my brother on the other end, asking if I had heard, Yes, I’d heard about the accident but nothing since then. The next words I heard made my knees weak, “He’s gone”. The days following were a blur, we celebrated his birthday best we could at his parent’s house with all his friends, family, beer and cornole, just how he would have wanted it and his mom released 21 balloons at 9:00pm, when he was born. And he was laid to rest on the 28^th. With the one year mark being this Sunday, the 23rd, it stirs up all the pain, it stirs up all the emotions that came with not knowing the last hug or text was going to be the last one. The pain we try to subdue all year long seems to surface around this time, the pain that will always leave a dull ache in our hearts for the rest of our lives.  If there is anything anyone can learn from TJ, its he lived everyday like it was his last. He experienced life with a smile and went out riding on something he loved doing that his friend only gave him the chance to do, a street bike. I hate the sound of them, I can’t look at them but it made him happy and he died, while living. Smells, places and materials always tie us to people, they always will and through these things you’re able to heal, remember and relive. The memories though faded, will last forever and whether it’s landing your first real job, laughing over coffee with someone who will be your forever, gazing into the eyes of your baby for the first time or saying goodbye to someone on a cool fall day, these moments made you the person you are today. Breathe in each moment and never forget what, or who, made you. Reminiscing on these times, even the hard ones, will help even the most lost soul, find their way back home. Each person, each experience and every love in your life has impacted it, whether you know it or not. It’s ok to laugh, its ok to cry and its ok to hug a little harder when it’s a bad day. Utilize your friends, especially the ones whom you don’t have to say a word to, the ones that just know you need them. Embrace your family, in every conceivable manner, family is the link to our past and the bridge to our future. It is tied to places, events and history. With all these felt details, life etches itself into memory.


Miss you TJ, a little more everyday.

www.inlovingmemoryoftjmullins.weebly.com