FU 2014!!!

Each year after all the drama and chaos that comes with end of the year holidays and associated festivities we anxiously look forward to the do over/fresh start of the New Year.   We think back on the year remembering all the good times, not so good times, what we did, didn't do, and wish we did.   We then vow to make changes so that the New Year is even better than the last.  It is will also be the year we follow through with all our resolutions.

My 2013 was beyond hectic and crazy, not only did the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas seem incredibly short, but my brewer-husband, Kevin, was consumed with all the plans, permitting, equipment, and construction that was (is) needed for the brewery in addition to working his full time job.  He had little or no time for our everyday home life responsibilities.   The majority of responsibilities we used to share then fell on me to do (..and still does) along with me working my full time job.   I was more than ready for a New Year. 

   

After all the Christmas presents had been opened and I could finally sit back and relax, I too started reflecting on things that had happened over the year.  It was then I declared that 2013 would be “that  year “.   You know the year, the one that when your old and you and your spouse will reminisce and laugh and make comments like “ it is a wonder we survived without killing each other”.  Unlike 2013, 2014 would be the year that I would finally be organized, it would be less chaos, less stress, laundry done routinely, I would blog regularly, and of course I would do the obligatory  lose weight, exercise, and get healthy.   Goodbye chaos and stress, hello carefree, organized and sexier me (from the weight loss, exercise, and getting healthy).   

 It became very clear 90 days into 2014 that 2014 had no intention on allowing 2013 to take “that year” in my history title.   Not only did 2014 trump 2013 for chaos and stress, but also knocked 2000 (the year my father died) down to being the second worst year of my life.

   I should have been aware of 2014 plotting against 2013, when the week before Christmas I found out that my Uncle David had a mass on his lung that was most likely cancer.  My Uncle David was only 10 years older than myself and was more like a brother to me than an Uncle.  The thought of him having cancer and possibly dying seemed implausible.  David possessed a young carefree soul like Peter Pan and the man never seemed to age.  David had just reconnected the previous year with his son he had with a former girlfriend.  She had moved away with their son when he was three leaving no way for David to find them.  His son was now in his early twenties and married with a family of his own.   David and I had grown even closer since I moved to Savannah, now that we only lived few hours away.  More importantly he was going on his twenty year anniversary with, Janet the women that gave his life the love and  the stability he didn’t have as a kid.   David’s life was finally in a good, happy, and content place, he could not possibly die now!! Surely modern medicine could get rid of the cancer or at least give him a few more years.

   As 2013 counted down its last few remaining days it attempted a last ditch effort to secure its “that  year” title.    David had to be hospitalized due to breathing difficulties and along with that came the confirmation of cancer, one that was very aggressive with very low survival rate.  The doctors however gave us the hope of more time with a medical research trial that he qualified to participate.  The doctors were excited to have him in the trial since he was younger and otherwise healthier than the majority of people with that lung cancer.   He was released from the hospital and sent home on December 31.    David’s  best friend from childhood,  his remaining surviving siblings an older brother and sister, his son and his family, along with my family including my brother and my mother (his sister In-law)  all converged upon him.   Each of us brought there by our family bonds, love, and the fear of losing him.   We all knew we had let too much time pass between seeing those familiar smiles from our past and guilty of getting too caught up in our own lives to notice.  The same loving family bond that brought us together also dissolved away any hard feelings or strangeness that may have existed by living such different lives so far apart for so long.   The house he returned to that day was filled with an atmosphere of hope, love, memories and gratitude for time.   During those days I know time passed yet it felt like we were exempt from it, as if we were somewhere between 2013 and 2014.   It was if we were in a time that did not belong to either year.    It would be 3 days before 2014 would find us in that time void and force us to return to our own daily lives and for cancer to also claim the man I thought would live forever.

Despite losing David to 2014, I still held on to the belief that 2014 would still be able to become a great year of great things.  It was just off to slow start thanks to damn cancer and 2013.  Besides how bad could 2014 be, after all it did let us linger in that time void with David.  It had help us to come to terms with losing him a little easier.   

Apparently 2014 was just setting me up.   It didn't let us linger in that time void.   2014 was too busy plotting blindside devastation and heart break to not only secure its place in my heart of records to be “that year” but also its place in the heart of many others.     

April 1, 2014, my niece Brianna, only 17 days away from that monumental 21^st birthday, died suddenly and unexpectedly in a hospital in Texas.   My niece had joined the Army and was stationed at Ft. Hood. She had called me on a Thursday complaining she was sick with a cough and fever.  Friday she called to let me know they were admitting her to the hospital ICU and they were going to put her on a ventilator to help her breathe.  Saturday she still had a fever, but it was lower and her blood oxygen levels were getting higher.   Sunday the fever had broken, her lungs were clearing and healing.   The doctors felt she was well enough to be weaned from ventilator starting the following morning and we all felt she was on the road to recovery.  Except on Monday morning her heart would stop, and then would stop three more times, then on the fourth time the medical team was not able to get it beating again.   Every test they ran from A to Z when she was first admitted had come back negative.  It was not a case of Legionnaires disease or the flu.  The heart ultra-sound and heart catheterization procedures that had been performed to figure out why her heart was stopping did not reveal a cause or show a problem.     There was no reason, no cause, and nothing to blame.  There was no time void, no cancer, only questions.   Maybe we will know more later since they continued to search for answers after she was a gone, but I don’t think they will find a reason. 

Her Mom and Dad, despite being divorced since Brianna was around 8 months old, had both been there with her.  They did not have the chance to see her blue eyes open wide with shock to find them both standing next to her at the same time.   Her parents both lived in SC and had arrived at the hospital after she had been placed in a medical induced coma while on the ventilator.   Brianna’s husband of less than 9 months, also in the Army, had recently been deployed to Korea.  He was sent home through the Red Cross as fast as possible, but was unable to get to her before she passed away.    Her death came as a shock to everyone, including the doctors and nurses.  

The relationship I had with my niece was one that I struggle with words to describe.  The word special does not convey or begin to touch on the connection.   I loved her unconditionally.  There was nothing that she could have ever said or have done that would have ever made me not love her.   Even in death I could not hate her for dying.   My heart harbors a lot of frustration, hurt and anger for feeling like she was stolen from us.  It is these types of feelings when someone dies with so many questions,  that people will direct their blame and hurt toward God.    God let her die.   Everyone I knew and some I didn’t had prayed for her to get better, but she didn’t.   Did God ignore us?  Shouldn’t I blame God?

Brianna left behind so many that loved her that needed answers, needed to blame, and just needed to be angry.   There was her younger sister that had driven Brianna to madness when she was little and then become her closest friend that she worried about and missed horribly when apart.  There was the friend she had known since was five.  The same friend who she loved so much that the hurt and frustration of her being in relationship with a guy that did not value, respect, protect, or appreciate her had them on temporary nonspeaking terms.   There was her friend that had traveled across the country twice to be with her once when she completed boot camp and again when she needed a piece of home with her in Texas.   There was so many new friends and old friends whose lives she touched, each in different ways.   There was a new husband and his family who had also fallen in love with her.    There was Grandparents, Step Dads, a Step-sister, Cousins, Uncles and another wonderful Aunt that helped guide her through this crazy world.  There was Maw-Maw, and for her, Brianna was her sunshine.  There was her Father who Brianna thought had hung the moon.   

 It was my brother, her father that made sure many of us didn’t turn our angry hearts and blame to God.   After doing all that he could for Brianna in Texas, unlike the urgent and anxious drive to get to her the drive home was just a long drive.     The drive gave him time to think and when he got home he posted the following to Brianna’s Facebook page.

  “…..Well like most everyone I have talk to we are all mad Brianna was taken away. But on my 19 hr drive yesterday all I could do was think. So I thought of all the joy and love and laughs Brianna gave me. So I instead of cursing God I thanked God for giving me such an amazing time with her. Don't get me wrong I want her back but now I am just glad I did have this time with her. She had a lot of conflict but now it's over and we have an angel that will look after us like she did when she was here.”'

How could I blame God now?  My Brother was right, God put her in my life and I hers.  I could be mad at the hospital staff, but they did everything they could to keep her here.   In a conversation I had with a friend after losing Brianna, they had made the comment that it was going to be a rough year.   It was then I realized it was 2014 that deserved all my hurt, blame, and anger.    It made perfect sense, at least to me in my own way of managing grief and irrational thoughts.   2014 had planned this all along, so as not to be out down by 2013 and to secure its place as “that year” to never be forgotten.     It could have been left to 2064 to take her away, but instead it was 2014.   Asshole.

2014 to date has yet to care about my pain.   Instead it continues to create even more chaos and havoc as in some sick act of triumph,  by making time tick away a faster.    2014 has kept  Kevin even more tired and busy by  making sure brewery construction deadlines, schedules, and projects are barely made or pushed back, thus leaving me often  alone to learn how to live without Brianna, while trying to keep up with three kids, my full time job, laundry, bills, appointments… You know those annoying everyday life and responsibilities.  My once idealistic New Year resolutions of organization and flat abs have given away to merely surviving 2014.   

 Every time I laugh instead of cry and every morning I get out of bed to defend those I love from  what  else 2014  may have  in store, I like to think that I am giving 2014 the middle finger , with a big  ol’ Fu*K You !!

Brianna Fleshman Baxter 1993 - 2014Brianna's Memorial Video

David L. Fleshman 1963 - 2014