Defining Moments

Featuring book endings, GoT spoilers, and foul language

Defining Moments. Everyone knows what they are. We have all experienced them in some way. I’ve read about them time and time again in my favorite books. Harry Potter denies House Slytherin. Cheryl Strayed decides to hike thousands of miles. Katniss Everdeen defies the capital by deciding to eat deadly nightlock berries (two sentences in and am already fully exposing my nerdiness here.). They’re all over the screen as well. Princess Buttercup goes back to Prince Humperdinck to save Wesley. Theon Greyjoy rushes towards the Night King to save Bran (Sorry not sorry). These moments – where these characters choose good over evil or someone else’s needs over their own – are what shape their character and make us root for them. These moments are what makes them the heroes of their own stories.

I have had some defining moments in my life as well, albeit not nearly as badass. Choosing a college. Saying yes to my Husband’s proposal. Accepting my health care administration job. Decisions such as these are what have paved the path of my life. Your decisions have paved the path of yours. Without even realizing it, we have all constructed our own defining moments.

But what about the moments we did not chose? I wrote the words “choice” and “decide” in the above paragraphs twenty times over to make a point, not to make you think that I am a complete shit writer two minutes in. I promise I have access to a Thesaurus and use it generously. The point I am trying to make and have kept coming back to this past year is this: the defining moments we all focus on – in fiction and in our own lives – are the ones where we took that leap of faith. When we made that conscious decision to go this way and not that. These are the stories we all want to hear about. Why? Because in these moments we are in control. And nobody wants to believe that their life’s path can be completely changed by the uncontrollable.

On May 11, 2018 – or Five One One as I have unconsciously been referring to it in my head for the past year – I experienced the most defining moment of my life. Despite all the “right” choices I have made, despite all the comeback stories I have read and loved, on Five One One I was sitting in a hospital room, watching the center of my entire universe go way too long between each gasp for air. My Mom was dying, and I was no longer praying for some Cinderella story. There was no path I could turn down that would make this go away. All I could do is sit there and wish each breath would be her last so it could be over. So I could finally get the fuck out of that hospital I have been sitting in since my Mom’s “very routine” procedure went wrong four days prior. So I could stop fooling myself into thinking every flutter of her eyelids was a sign that she was turning some miraculous corner and was going to wake up. So I didn’t have to keep avoiding looking into my brother’s face because taking on his grief would throw me right over the edge. And frankly, just so I didn’t have to watch this slow, agonizing process of death anymore.

I had no choice in this matter. It was nothing I did that made my Mom get diagnosed with stage II breast cancer almost nine years prior. It was no path I turned down that made her cancer come back and spread in 2014. It was not a punishment from the Earth or from God for some bad choice my Mom or my family had made. She had no control over her diagnoses and her disease progression, and we who loved her most, sure as hell had no say in the outcome of this day. And I knew full well that the control I have so aggressively maintained over every aspect of my life could not prepare me for what was to come.

For the life of me, I cannot remember the exact time it all ended, which makes me feel extremely guilty. My Mom could remember the exact date of our first tooth falling out for God’s sake and I can’t even remember this. But it ended all the same. With a room full of people who loved her, as my brother and Dad held her hands and I kissed her cheek, she went silent. I remember asking the Nurse, “Is it over?” She checked for a heartbeat, looked at us and nodded. Without even thinking, I instantly walked out of the room. I needed to get out of there.  I was shocked and ashamed about how I felt. I felt relieved, I felt tired, and frankly, I felt undeniably pissed off. At this point I had completely lost any decency I had within myself and kept thinking, “I put all my eggs in one basket.” Over and over again, even as I tried to make my own mind shut the F up, I kept thinking it. I thought, “I’m a smart girl, I should have known better than to make her the person I base every decision off of, my one true confidant, the only person who knows me better than myself. Having one person be every extension of yourself in life is too risky.” As I looked around at our framily in that sterile hospital hallway, people I loved and who have showed up for my family time and time again, I felt nothing but selfish rage that this was happening to my family and not theirs. Even though I knew they were experiencing their own pain and grief, I also could not help but think that they still got to go home to their families, whole. They got to call their Moms in the car leaving the hospital. They got to still celebrate Mother’s Day that Sunday. It was my Dad, my brother and me who have to return to a home that is now just a house. We were the ones whose every day life would forever be tarnished. We were going to be the ones left here. And because of this, I just kept thinking, “You set yourself up for failure. Now what?”

I am not proud of my thoughts on that day. If that was my defining moment, I was handling it horribly in comparison to the heroes from the stories I always strive to emulate. I would love to tell you that this was me at my weakest. That it was the instant shock of grief that drove me into this selfish rage, and I never again thought such horrible things once leaving the hospital that night. But the truth is that was my first, but not even close to my last, wounding thought that has crept into my mind since Five One One.  As I have navigated the “now what?” of this insurmountable defining moment of my life, I have had instances of utter disdain for myself, those I love and my life. As a girl who has always had her emotions in check and who has never truly felt much without first giving herself permission, these were uncharted waters. I would picture her gasping for air and immediately start to gasp for air myself. And even more alarming, it became so simple to hate everyone else for it, too. There were days where this frame of mind was all consuming. It became natural to just bury myself in my own grief and go to bed at night feeling unequivocally and unabashedly alone.

There is a lot of bullshit out there about grief. I was given several books about death from loved ones in those first weeks AM (Meaning, “After Mom.” Can you tell I work in health care? We freaking love our acronyms.), all of which I got through maybe twenty pages of. But the one phrase that I had heard that I now can 100% vouch for is “grief is the most lonely place in the world.” In the beginning – still even now in my lowest moments – I had no idea who to talk to or how to even begin a conversation about how I was/am feeling. I truly believed my grief was my own and nobody else’s.  Even my brother and Dad who experienced the same loss couldn’t feel the way I felt. There were no words in the English language that could even come close to describing the pain and complete loss weighing me down. I tricked myself into believing nobody else could have ever felt the internal pain I woke up with each day. It was too much for for me to fathom that others could be walking around, shouldering sadness such as this without the world noticing. Surely, if anyone looked into my eyes for even a split second, they had to see I was drowning within myself.

While I was spiraling down this “nobody understands me” black hole (if you know my Dad and the dynamics of we Mehlbergs whatsoever, you will completely understand how I can make fun of my “woe is me” attitude), I finally began to find glimmers of solace. As I was waiting for some big sign from my Mom, God or someone I loved, I discovered flashes of repose in the inconsequential. Do you know what finally pulled me out of myself and gave me a good, hard reality check? It wasn’t some major sign from the universe or someone coming to save me. It was the indescribable magic of finding something or someone who finally understood. I can’t explain the reprieve I would feel when I would find a quote on Pinterest that made me cry tears of relief. Or how hard it was for me to continue driving the first time I heard “Beloved” by Mumford and Sons. Or how I was able to feel some sense of normalcy when I would text my friend Chelsea, who lost her Dad years prior and she could not only relate, but could commiserate with my worst thought of the day. These words didn’t even need to be about the death of my Mom, or even about death at all. They were simply words that made me believe for the very first time that I could keep on and move forward with this wounded heart and this flawed life that is mine. In the moments where I felt completely alone in my own darkness, I was more scared than I was in my first “now what?” moment on Five One One. These words gave me hope. Each time I felt that twinkle of “someone gets it,” I was able to come back to myself in the smallest of ways through that connection. It was that sense of fellowship through understanding that allowed me to stop gasping for air.

I am no expert in death. I am not an expert in anything (Okay. I do like to think of myself as an “almost expert” in Harry Potter, The Office, Game of Thrones, The Green Bay Packers, beer, and puppies. But that is for another time). I will never pretend to be some sort of grief mentor to help coach others through their loss or their life. I am not nearly refined enough for such a role (see: the swearing, the nerdiness, etc.). But I found myself beginning to think in these past months about how many other people are out there, literally searching for that quote or that song or even that blog post that is going to give them their deep breath? Who else is thinking, “There is nobody else in the world feeling the way I do.” and, at the same time, subconsciously begging someone to prove them wrong. So, if there is one person who reads something on here (literally, it could be only one person that ever reads this blog, and that is alright with me.) that can go to bed tonight with “our” thoughts in their head instead of just their own isolation, then I have been able to carry on my Mom’s legacy – who loved more selflessly than anyone I have ever known – in the slightest of ways. I can begin to put one foot in front of the other on my new path.

You cannot beat death. Death is the only certainty in this life for all of us. But, through my trial and errors of this past year, I have learned that the only way death wins is if you let it keep you from living. Everyone has had, or will have a Five One One. We will all lose that control and will unknowingly free fall into a vast, dark journey that we didn’t ever foresee. But, despite what has happened to you or what is happening around you, when you wake up every morning, you have a choice. You decide if you are going to stay at a standstill within your life because it is hard, or if you are going to bravely move forward with grace, a fearless love for others, and a desire to make those you lost proud. I have to believe that if you consciously decide, each and every day, to not only live but to grow from your suffering, what can be more defining than that?