February 26th, 2010

Happy Birthday Nicola

In Lov­ing Mem­ory of Nicola Diana Kennedy

You would have been 37 today and for rea­sons still unknown you were taken from us just 9 days after you turned 36. Life has been so hard since then. I tried to be strong– to keep Jaida and Kayla together to ease the pain that they were feel­ing. I have endured crit­i­cism from many– both to my face and behind my back– for things that were beyond my con­trol and even now I am sure that peo­ple are whis­per­ing about how I am not doing what I should to make sure that every­one is OK. But, and it has taken most of the year for me to real­ize this, none of that mat­ters because when it comes right down to it, no one can ever truly under­stand the bond between sisters.

You and Car­o­line are the first friends I ever knew. You were my pro­tec­tors when life was scary and our bond was so much stronger than the future argu­ments that would tear us all apart for so many years. We are sur­vivors. Fos­ter par­ents, orphan­ages, adop­tion, daddy’s death.… Hell, we sur­vived Momma Kennedy and her strict par­ent­ing! We were always there for eachother even if that meant not being there at all.

No one can ever truly under­stand that bond and no one can take that away.

I miss you. I miss the times that we shared– our dance rou­tines, hair and makeup lessons, sneak­ing out to Skate Key and the Fever and your advice on how to deal with our mother. I miss your smile and your will­ing­ness to help every­one– even those who did noth­ing but take advan­tage of you. I miss your pas­sion to live and your hot tem­per. I miss the phone calls and our talks about sex and all the things that we were told were naughty. I long so much for the days of Clear Pool Camp, dou­ble dutch at Grandma’s, and you braid­ing my hair so tightly that I would cry just from mom telling you to do my hair.

I wish that I could have pro­tected you from all of the chaos, but you wouldn’t let me. You never let me for­get that you were my big sis­ter. I wish that I could tell you that I love you and hear you tell me again. I wish that you and Car­o­line could have said the things that you both really wanted to say to each other. I wish that we could have all just hugged each other one last time.

Nicola, I miss you so very much. I have let go of all of anger and the hurt. Car­o­line and I under­stand now. We will honor our sis­ter­hood because we learned from you just how short life is and how much regret weighs.

I am eter­nally grate­ful for the time we shared. I was blessed to have you and to have known the real you. We will for­ever be the Kennedy Girls and I will love you always. Happy Birthday.

Your baby sis­ter,
Kristina

February 22nd, 2010

In Memory of a Little Life

In Lov­ing Mem­ory of Saman­tha Michelle
Born too Soon at 19.5 weeks
Feb­ru­ary 22, 2003

February 21st, 2010

Bad Mommy: Yup, That’s Me!

In keep­ing with my not-so-vocalized plan to take care of myself this year, I have been going to var­i­ous doc­tors to ensure that my health is up to par. This includes the den­tist. Back in Decem­ber a tooth broke so I found a den­tist who referred me to a Peri­odon­tist to make sure that the gum area where the tooth broke was clean enough to have a replace­ment. Between my den­tist appoint­ment and my peri­odon­tics appoint­ment, the tooth next to the on that fell out– a tooth that was pre­vi­ously root canaled– also fell out​.My years of mak­ing fun od the var­i­ous tooth­less peo­ple in my col­lege town of Oneonta were com­ing back to haunt me! At any rate, I saw the peri­odon­tist on Sat­ur­day and had to have both teeth extracted.

If you have never had a tooth extracted, con­sider your­self lucky. In fact, despite hav­ing been in labor for over 30 hours and even­tu­ally hav­ing to recover from a c-section, I will tell you that the post-operative pain of a tooth extrac­tion is the WORST pain that I have ever felt. It is a com­bi­na­tion of back labor mixed with a per­ineum tear all while hav­ing a root canal with­out anes­the­sia. One day after the surgery, I found myself break­ing down in tears every few min­utes as my body received jolts of pain.

Now, I have pain killers. He pre­scribed, along with an antibi­otic, Tylenol with Codine which never really works for me but does allow me to sleep. How­ever, when it comes to drugs, I am a light­weight. One Tylenol PM knocks me out for 12 hours and I have to refrain from tak­ing any­thing when I am home alone with my daugh­ter. So today, while my hus­band was at work from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm, I was forced to go med­i­cine free, take care of my daugh­ter and even walk the dog.

And that’s where the “bad mommy” thing comes into the play. My hus­band fed her break­fast this morn­ing, and for lunch I fed her fudge cook­ies and milk. I fol­lowed that up with a snack of fudge cook­ies and a few sips of my soda. For din­ner, I begged her dad to bring her Chicken Nuggets and apple slices from McDonald’s. I did not get her dressed today nor were her teeth brushed this morning.

And I feel very guilty. This never hap­pens– even when I am sick she gets bal­anced meals and a bath. Today, how­ever, I had an Aim­ing Low moment and I swear all I could do was apol­o­gize to my hus­band. Luck­ily, the Tylenol with Codine will kick in soon and I sus­pect that the guilt would be for­got­ten. I am shar­ing this sim­ply because I want proof that we all mess up. And that I am human.