We are coming up to the one year mark…
I’ve always found myself doing the “this time last year with Hannah…” thing. Trying to remember the good times, picturing her sweet little face.
One year ago, there were no smiles. Even worse, there would be no more smiles.
It was the beginning of a month-long round of hospitalizations that would end up with us having to make the horrific decision to put Hannah into hospice care in mid October of last year.
This time last year, we were still naive and still had hope it was something fixable, something she just needed to get through. Never in my mind did I think that her Gaucher’s disease destroyed her body so much to the point where she was in constant pain and discomfort from brainstem dysfunction and the other related crap Gaucher’s disease causes.
What really gets me right now is that I cannot for the life of me remember her last true smile. Had I known it would have been her last smile, I would have soaked it up. It was sometime at this point last year…
I’m going through this major guilt phase, wondering if we had missed something that we could have “fixed” to buy us more quality time with her. Could I have overlooked something simple, something that would have given us even just an extra day or two?
And on the flip side, did we cause her undue pain and suffering because we didn’t realize what was happening at this time last year? She was so uncomfortable, and we looked at everything – trachiitis, pneumonia, reflux, constipation… all her regular enemies.
I wish I remembered her last smile. Her last real smile. The one where she was just Hannah, beautiful, big cheeks, melt-into-your-heart smiling girl. The one where she made me feel so much love, unconditional love … raw, true love … just by looking into her eyes.
I feel like I should be able to remember that. But I don’t. I don’t. What does that say about me?
From this point on, “this time last year” will bring no more happy memories.
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