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The End of Childhood

Nicole V

Carolyn

I made the decision to go back to school when my son was 4 months old. When I completed high school 16 years ago I went to the same school I am in now to try and do something with my life. My father always said he was saving a college fund for when I went to college but I really didn’t want to go to college because I had NO IDEA what area of education to continue, so I went to the local Junior college. 14 years ago, I started my general education credits and spun through ideas of what I wanted to be when I grew up. And then my life took a turn when one of my favorite people died, my grandmother Carolyn.

Carolyn loved me. I was her jewel after a drunk driver hit and killed her adult daughter as she drove home from college in 1984. A part of my grandmother died along with her that night, and when I was born it was like the light came back into her life. She was proud of me and her love was a safe space. Carolyn’s passing was sudden. One day an obstruction in her intestine either burst or became septic and she died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. At the time, my father was living about an hour away and enjoying a few beers and watching the football game. The Rams were playing the 49 Whiners (misspelling intentional… It’s my blog #icandowhatiwant) that day, and my mother had been invited to go to that football game. So when I got the call from the hospital, she was in Candlestick Park wearing Rams gear and unavailable by phone. Before that call from the hospital, I was doing what any teenager would be doing in a parentless home, I invited all my friends over to watch the game. And then came the call. My grandfather was on the line, basically inaudible when he answered. He could barely get the name “Carolyn” out. A doctor quickly took over the call and said the words that led me on a mission to disconnect from reality for the next 10 years.

The Dr: “Your grandfather is here at the hospital.”

Me: …ok… “is he alright?”

The Dr: “Your grandmother Carolyn came to the ER and has passed, I’m so sorry”

My son still in the prime of his childhood. Discovering my in-laws yard in Milwaukee WI.

I believe all that came out was a long “nooo” that trailed off as every little bit of air escaped my lungs. I broke inside and my friends became incredibly uncomfortable and quiet. I told them they could go and then tried calling my parents. I broke the news to dad (Carolyn was his step mom, that he loved like his real mother) and he felt it was unsafe for him to drive and told me he’d be there in the morning. My mother didn’t answer because she never heard the call over the cheering crowd. I tried my father’s two brothers, who both live 2.5 hours away. They both told me they would come in the morning. In my frantic search for an adult to come help me, I understood that I would have to show up and be the adult for my grandfather whose world had just imploded. I was a kid feeling the terrible weight of no control and the next 6 years I did everything I could to solidify the illusion of control.

What was left of my childhood, had ended that day. To fix that I bandaged the wounds my heart endured with distraction, food, drugs, and others. My version of control looked this way: I could eat and purge as much as I wanted and take any drugs offered up to get and stay high. I thought I felt better, because I wasn’t really feeling. But as time went on I couldn’t purge the bad feelings any more. Binging on food and drugs wasn’t enough anymore as my tolerance and anxiety grew.

Strong Self

That day I went to the hopsital and said goodbye to her body. She had been intubated and had a tubes in and out of her mouth and skin. I had never seen a dead human body before but it just looked like my grandmother asleep. I touched and kissed her hand and cheek and said goodbye and then I took my grandfather back to their home. I could see the path the first responders took out of the home. Things shoved out of t he way, Carolyn’s EEG paper tossed to the floor. I could see her heartbeat, as if proving she had been alive earlier that day. My grandfather wanted their friends to know she’d passed, so I called all of them, ruining each friend’s day and reliving the news over and over again.

One positive thing that happened the day Carolyn died was that I was able to show up on the most difficult day of my life and I went through that experience with grace. By showing up this way, I got to experience myself as capable and strong even through the pain and deep sorrow. I advocated for what Carolyn wanted; I was the one who told the hospital where to take her body to be buried. I mourned her the way I wanted to: I chose to spend time with her body and love and respect it the way I wanted to. I was the one who contacted the friends and family in her life and be the voice of truth to tell them that she had crossed. I never would have chosen that for myself at the time but the strong side of me showed up to do it, and did it well. So even in all my desperation to not feel, I knew somewhere deep within that my strong self existed and was waiting for me to pull my shit together.

Changing My Story

In a session with my spiritual teacher recently, we talked about how I wear the weight of sadness and pain that isn’t mine to hold. I hold it because I have taught myself to hold it and I tell myself It’s my responsibility to carry it. It’s not as easy as just stopping, so if that’s what you’re thinking, think again. I have existed this way my whole life. When other people I love are depressed, I try to fix their sadness. This is what the usual pattern looks like:

We never stop blooming. Flower I photographed from my mothers yard.

But other’s sadness isn’t my burden to carry. In my own sadness (like Carolyn’s death) I cared for self in the wrong way. But through my growth over time, I began learning how to be my own champion and count on that stronger self to go through the painful feelings and FEEL THEM instead of burying myself. If I can stay conscious when I get triggered by someone’s sadness, I can begin to make the choice to do it differently, altering the same predictable storyline. The way we change our story is consciousness around what we want to change, repetition of that same moment, and not forcing things to change before we’re ready. Also to be gentle with ourselves through the failures. If I could meet back up with my younger self 14 years ago, I would try to show her some compassion and understanding. I would hug her and hold her, knowing she had a hard but, in the end, rewarding road ahead.

So this is the new course of action. Get out of the predictable rut. Make the conscious choice to do it differently when I am triggered. Tell myself that I am in control of the moment and try doing something differently. See what happens. And above all else try to take care of myself and love myself through these moments. Because it is hard and I’m not great at it yet. There will most likely be many failures ahead, until there isn’t.

How are you changing your story? What do you want to do differently? What have been your triumphs? Failures? Please leave a comment below, lets start a dialogue!

Thank you for reading, excuse my extended absence as I have begun a semester in my filmmaking major in school. I am hoping to start updating my photography and photo restoration section of the website. In the meantime if you want a ton of cute updates of my life in real-time you can follow me in many other places:

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