16th post The letter.

It was about 10:30pm Wednesday, the night before surgery. Will, my mom and I were leaving the house at 5am Thursday morning. I knew the kids were sleeping in our room. I could not fall asleep. I needed to write my kids a letter. THE letter.

I remember how overwhelmed I was with emotion. It struck me because to date, 2.5 weeks in, I had yet to break. I hadn’t allowed myself to think of my greatest fear.

Until now.

The house was quiet; my mom had arrived from Palm Springs safely and was fast asleep. Will’s sister Ellis was here from Connecticut, sleeping in Sally’s room. She would take the kids to school for us in the morning.

Will and I were in our bedroom talking about the morning ahead and then mercifully despite his best efforts, the sandman got him (it’s not that hard truth be told). Tomorrow was going to be a very long day for Will. He needed the sleep.

I knew I needed to get sleep too… that was the best thing I could do for my body, to give it a good nights rest before I was about to have a 3-4 inch man hole as they refer to it, carved out of my skull. And that was only the beginning of the surgery.

I couldn’t sleep despite my best efforts. So I went downstairs and finally wrote the letter I wanted to write. Not the letter I SHOULD have written, sealed in an envelop with big writing that said “DO NOT OPEN UNLESS SOMETHING WENT WRONG”. That is really the letter I should have written, God forbid.

But I didn’t. I wrote the letter any mother would write. I think I told my kids about 1,000 times how much I loved them, that they were going to have THE BEST DAY at school, that I knew they would be worried, and that I promised them the following:

For Will – that he could leave school early if he wanted to come see me. He is my little worrier. He had his big performance that day and was so upset that my surgery was going on at the same time. He said he wanted to leave the moment his performance was over. I told him he could –but that I thought seeing him in the evening would be better so mommy could sleep. That he would be doing me the favor if he could hang in there at school because otherwise I would be so excited to see him I would not rest the way the doctors wanted me to when I came out of surgery!

As for Sally, I promised she for sure could have her pizza party in my hospital room with four friends. That is what she wanted. I thought it sounded like a great idea (to an 8 year old!) so instead of arguing with her, I just said it was an awesome idea and when they arrived we could take orders and have it delivered. She would be very happy with this answer!

I told them they were mind blowingly (is that even a word) resilient and that I was so proud of them and how caring and kind they were. They (Daddy, Will and Sally) were so brave to go through all of this with me and I apologized profusely for getting us into this mess in the first place.

They are such great little troopers. They love me. They are scared more than their brains could comprehend and more than their word could articulate. They are stressed out and anxious. They are confused. Life has just turned upside down in a matter of weeks.  Yet they are so strong and so courageous. I don’t think I would have performed had I been Will. I certainly wouldn’t have thought about a party in the hospital and “showing off my mom with her staples” if I were Sally.

But I am not they. They are so much more.

It is an amazing thing when you can love something or someone so completely and totally. And I love them completely and totally. Most would think it would make our situation harder. It didn’t. It actually makes it easier. Because we all know – spoken and unspoken, that we all love each other so dearly.   I fell asleep within ten minutes of completing the letter.