Life goes on

Yes, life goes on.  That for me is one of the hardest things to deal with right now.  Life goes on for everyone else, but not Kelci.  Life goes on for us, but in such a profoundly different way. I's not the same life.  Michelle is without her other half, her best friend since birth.  Brian is without his baby sister, and he's so angry about that. Ray, my husband, is without his little girl.  He is lost, and consumed with such saddness, and I can't help him.  My baby girl isn't here with me anymore, all of my hopes, dreams, visions and expectations of what her life might be, are now gone, but around me, life goes on.

I try very hard to stay strong.  I need to be for everyone else around me.  I try not to ask why.  I know it is a question that will remain forever unanswered, and I know that if I dwell there I will likely make myself crazy and sink to the depths of despair.  I instead ask to be shown the way.  What purpose all of this could possibly have is beyond my understanding.  I try to not think about it. It's hard to think that there could be meaning in this, but it's harder to think that there is none.  Sometimes, I think I make no sense at all.  Sometimes I think nothing makes sense at all.

I'm still here, and she is not.  That is a truth that might forever haunt me as life goes on.  I don't think that's what I should let happen though.  I know that it's not what she would want, so everyday I try. Trying, right now, is all I can do.

Promises to keep

In the hours after the accident, I cursed everything I've ever known.  To say I was angry doesn't do it justice.  I was so f-in' pissed at the world and everything I ever believed.  I paced around my house and just screamed and screamed and screamed, gutural, wounded dying animal screams, for hours.  Everyone else went to bed, or just went to a quiet place away from me, and let me rant, curse, scream and cry until I physically couldn't anymore, and then I fell into a fitful sleep just to start all over again when I woke a few hours later.  Nothing prepares you for that kind of pain.  Nothing.  Losing a child is the worst kind of hell I could ever imagine.  It is a pain I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

I'm not sure when or how, but the anger somehow went away.  Pretty quickly too, or so it seems to me, I don't really know what the standards are for this sort of thing, and time, well, I lost a lot of that the first few days.  I have no idea how I got from minute to minute.  I vaguely remember people and conversations, but don't have a real grasp on it.  I don't know if I ever will.  Right now, a month later, it seems like this just happened yesterday, and I still don't know how we got here. Time in a way stopped for us that day. I know weeks have passed, but I forget so much, but at the same  time remember too much.  In any event, at some point in the first few days after the accident, maybe that first day, I released much of the anger.  I know it was there, and then it was gone.

Focusing on positve things seemed to take over.  I had to make plans, or should I say I was forced to make plans.  I had to find a funeral home, decide on arrangements, all sorts of horrible things I never imagined I would ever have to do.

Instinctively, I immeadiately knew that she would be cremated, and I also knew that I would be taking her ashes to scatter in California. It's where she always wanted to be.  I also decided that we would not be having a traditional viewing or funeral and that we would be celebrating Kelci's life and not mourning it.  She and her life were too awesome not to celebrate and she would never want the traditional.  We ultimately decided on an outdoor celebration of her life (more on that later), and it turned out to be one of the most beautiful experiences of my life.  Our family, friends and the community embraced it and it gave us a peacefulness, experience and memory than we will carry with us for a lifetime.

This whole thing is horrible and sad enough, we didn't need to make ourselves even sadder by enduring a viewing, funeral and burial.  Things that none of us (my immeadiate family and I) are fond of anyway.  Please understand, I'm not knocking the traditional, I know for some people it is exactly what they need and I would never try to denounce them, it's just not for us, especially not for Kelci.  Everyone needs to do things the way that works best for them.  I just knew they weren't Kelci and they were not what we needed at this time. I'm enterally grateful we did things the way we did.  It worked for us, and that is what matters.  Nothing else.

At the Celebration for Kelci and in the days after the accident and leading up to the celebration, I learned so much about myself and so much more about my daughter.  I knew she was awesome, but I don't think anybody was fully aware of the extent of her impact on the world.  That's what I'm trying to hold on to now.

As I planned her celebration, I made promises to her.   First and foremost, I promised her that I would celebrate her life and not mourn her death, because it was such a beautiful life worth celebrating.  I vowed I would live a good life for her, and that I would try my hardest to stay happy and positive in spite of this.  I know that's what she would want.  In my tribute to her, "For Kelci", I promised this.  Some days it's not just hard to keep my promises, it's almost impossible, but for her it is what I need to and will do.

The dumping ground

Kelci, Route 1, Pacifica, CA. June 2012
"I couldn't give my life for hers,
but I can live the best life I can in her honor."

Very quickly after posting the first thing here, I figured out this will not be linear.  As soon as I tried to write about the accident, I was frozen in my tracks. I can get out that it happened, but going back to the details of those dark moments of finding out and reliving the hell I was trown into after are not easy.

For now, this will be a dumping ground of sorts. Whatever I'm feeling at the moment, whatever I need to talk about right now to get me through, keep me sane, well that's what this will be.  It might not be pretty, but this isn't.  This is raw.  This is painful.  This is the worst possible thing I could ever imagine, and I never thought that it would be something I would be writing about as an expert.  It sucks.  Plain and simple, life without Kelci, trying to find a different way, just sucks.

Many people keep telling me how inspirational I am, how positive I am, how strong I am, but that is not how I feel at all.  I'm trying the best I can using what I've learned in my life.  I am trying to be a good, decent person. I am just being me.  If that comes off as strong, positive and inspiring, so be it. 

I've learned through all this, that Kelci was all those things too.  Well, I knew it before, but it is even more apparent now.  She touched and inspired people in so many places just by being herself. It's been awe-inspiring to witnesss.  She was nice to everyone, always had a smile on her face and always tried to lift others up.  People are trying to be better people now in honor of her.  I will try to be a better person for her.  I owe her that.  I couldn't give my life for hers, but I can live the best life I can in her honor.

Kelci Ever After, the beginning

This story begins on July 24, 2012 a little after 10 pm with a knock on the door.  It's really not a story at all, but a nightmare, my nightmare, my family's nightmare, and it's true.  This is my life since my beautiful 22 year old daughter, Kelci, passed away in a car accident.  It is the story of how we are trying to cope and trying to find a way to live differently without her in our lives. It will also be the amazing story of Kelci, who lived more in her 22 years than many people live in a lifetime.

I didn't intend to write about this, but as I'm learning through all of this,  what you intend doesn't always matter.  I started to write about it on Facebook, and it seemed to help me, and it seemed to help others, so I continued to write.  I've been wrting to Kelci in a journal, and I've been posting more and more on Facebook, and I'm responding to emails from other who are grieving.  I also wrote a tribute to Kelci that I read at her Celebration of Life (we chose to that instead of something more traditional, because there was far too much saddness and suffering already, but I'll be writing more on that later). Four almost four weeks, four of the worst weeks of my life, I have written, and I've tried to cope, understand and make sense of this.  There is no sense in it.

This blog is for me more than anyone else, and I'll continue as long as I feel it's helping. It will be about my feelings, it will be about Kelci, it will we about whatever I need it to be in the moment.  It might not make sense to others, it might not make sense to me, but maybe it will help.  That's all I can hope for.

The name, Kelci Ever After, came to me as I was mowing the lawn and struggling to keep my composure.  Chores, that were once bothersome, are downright torturous in grief (more on that later), and I guess I was trying to distract myself.  I thought about writing a blog and wondered what I'd call it and then I was thinking about stories and thinking we were never going to get our "happily ever after", because our story was forever alterted.  Then it hit me, this is life after Kelci, this is my Kelci Ever After, and so it begins.

Kelci was a twin, and her sister, Michelle, will be part of this story, as will all of our family, me, my husband, Ray, and Kelci's older brother, Brian.  We are all in this together.  We are all dealing with this differently.  We are all doing the best we know how with what we have been given. We are all learning to find our way without Kelci.