Six Months
Today is six months without her, which is crushing but also just the start. Soon it will be a year, then five years, 20 years, then a lifetime. I can’t… I just can’t get myself to accept that or come to peace with it.
In some respects, though, we may have received a bonus year of Adrianna. As I’ve discussed before, she had a heart event in February of 2024 that required a week in ICU when it was touch and go as to whether she’d survive. But, against many odds she somehow did survive, and we all breathed a small sigh of (temporary) relief.
In many ways, however, Adri never fully recovered. During the ensuing 15 months prior to the finality of May 22 of this year she told me many times that she felt different. I asked for clarification, but she had a hard time putting it into words:
“I don’t know, dad, I just feel weird. Like out of synch with life. I feel like I shouldn’t be here right now… I think I was supposed to die last February. Sometimes I feel like I did die, and this isn’t real.”
I still didn’t fully understand, but that was the best she could do to explain what she meant. I did know that this was concerning, this overly fatalistic and deterministic view of her existence.
Other times, many times, when she’d see an old picture or video of herself from 15 or 20 years ago, she’d say something like,
“I miss that person. I miss myself. I don’t know what happened to her. I wish I could get her back.”
I tried to be there for her, but was aware that sometimes it’s not easy (or helpful or healthy or productive) to talk to a family member about such things, especially one as empathetic as Adri who didn’t want to worry anyone.
She had Medicare and sometimes Medicaid (depending on the age of her boys at a given time,) but as we all know these programs, especially the ones dependent on the given state providing most of the help, are woefully insufficient in their support of mental health care. Let’s just say that Texas especially isn’t really concerned with such things.
Still, she’d somehow find a therapist who’d accept her insurance after a lot of work and effort with web searches, phone calls, visits, and emails. But it was limited care, at best once a month for an hour, and then she had to get there. Occasionally she’d find teletherapy and be able to do it from home, which was easier, if perhaps a bit less effective.
However, without exaggeration, at least half the time the therapist would cancel a day or two before, and she’d miss that entire month… and they’d never be able to reschedule before her next month.
And worse, about once a year the therapist would opt to leave the Medicare system entirely and she’d have to start the hunt all over again.
At one point last year after seeing this happen again and again and again, I told her that we’d pay for therapy, without relying on insurance. We’d pay for a monthly session and she could still do what she could with Medicare/caid. She was worried about having to make us spend money, so I told her we could use some of the school money we still had waiting for her if it made her feel better, and that we could replace that later.
I told her she wouldn’t be able to finish school, anyway, until she got herself healthy. It was the same theme that I always tried to make clear to her, that she had to make herself healthy in the present before she could help others, and that included her future self. The old “Parents, put your oxygen mask on first before doing so for your child” idea that you hear prior to every takeoff in an airplane.
But it never happened.
“I feel funny, dad, like I already died and shouldn’t be here.”
She said that the last time just a month before it became true.
Did we really get a bonus year… did reality somehow break in February of 2024 and Adri sneaked in an extra 15 months?
All I know is that I’d have used any cheat code to make sure she was still here, and I’d have given anything if she could have felt in synch with her world and found her place in it, living happily ever after.
In some respects, though, we may have received a bonus year of Adrianna. As I’ve discussed before, she had a heart event in February of 2024 that required a week in ICU when it was touch and go as to whether she’d survive. But, against many odds she somehow did survive, and we all breathed a small sigh of (temporary) relief.
In many ways, however, Adri never fully recovered. During the ensuing 15 months prior to the finality of May 22 of this year she told me many times that she felt different. I asked for clarification, but she had a hard time putting it into words:
“I don’t know, dad, I just feel weird. Like out of synch with life. I feel like I shouldn’t be here right now… I think I was supposed to die last February. Sometimes I feel like I did die, and this isn’t real.”
I still didn’t fully understand, but that was the best she could do to explain what she meant. I did know that this was concerning, this overly fatalistic and deterministic view of her existence.
Other times, many times, when she’d see an old picture or video of herself from 15 or 20 years ago, she’d say something like,
“I miss that person. I miss myself. I don’t know what happened to her. I wish I could get her back.”
I tried to be there for her, but was aware that sometimes it’s not easy (or helpful or healthy or productive) to talk to a family member about such things, especially one as empathetic as Adri who didn’t want to worry anyone.
She had Medicare and sometimes Medicaid (depending on the age of her boys at a given time,) but as we all know these programs, especially the ones dependent on the given state providing most of the help, are woefully insufficient in their support of mental health care. Let’s just say that Texas especially isn’t really concerned with such things.
Still, she’d somehow find a therapist who’d accept her insurance after a lot of work and effort with web searches, phone calls, visits, and emails. But it was limited care, at best once a month for an hour, and then she had to get there. Occasionally she’d find teletherapy and be able to do it from home, which was easier, if perhaps a bit less effective.
However, without exaggeration, at least half the time the therapist would cancel a day or two before, and she’d miss that entire month… and they’d never be able to reschedule before her next month.
And worse, about once a year the therapist would opt to leave the Medicare system entirely and she’d have to start the hunt all over again.
At one point last year after seeing this happen again and again and again, I told her that we’d pay for therapy, without relying on insurance. We’d pay for a monthly session and she could still do what she could with Medicare/caid. She was worried about having to make us spend money, so I told her we could use some of the school money we still had waiting for her if it made her feel better, and that we could replace that later.
I told her she wouldn’t be able to finish school, anyway, until she got herself healthy. It was the same theme that I always tried to make clear to her, that she had to make herself healthy in the present before she could help others, and that included her future self. The old “Parents, put your oxygen mask on first before doing so for your child” idea that you hear prior to every takeoff in an airplane.
But it never happened.
“I feel funny, dad, like I already died and shouldn’t be here.”
She said that the last time just a month before it became true.
Did we really get a bonus year… did reality somehow break in February of 2024 and Adri sneaked in an extra 15 months?
All I know is that I’d have used any cheat code to make sure she was still here, and I’d have given anything if she could have felt in synch with her world and found her place in it, living happily ever after.
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