juli

I don’t remember the first time I met her. I rarely do when it comes to these things. I don’t remember the first time I met Sarah (either my wife or my sister…😉). Well, I recall the meeting, but not her (my wife, that is). I was hanging out with some of my friends and don’t quite recall her. Not the greatest story I suppose, but in my mind I met her at a party which she had snuck out to get to…which sounds a little cooler I think. But anyway, this isn’t about Sarah.

 It’s about Juli. It’s about three years since she died. Three years on May 25^th…although it all went down on May 24^th, so that’s really more the day in my mind. I remember that day well. Actually most of that month of May, which is also rare. But then it was a memorable month.

Asher was born on May 3^rd (almost May the 4^th…which would have pleased Chad, but I think Ash knew I was a bigger Doctor Who fan…). Juli died on May 25^th. Almost exactly three weeks where Ash and his grandmother existed in the same world. Actually she had the heart attack on the 24^th, so really the 25^th is more of a technicality. I’ve talked about this before, wrote a whole two or three paragraphs on it, so I’ll just briefly paraphrase myself. Essentially what I said was that the pain never really goes away. It fades, yes, and of course these things are different for everyone else. But what I wrote resonated with a lot of people, which I don’t say to brag or something, but just to note that what I feel is a common feeling. I think I thought there would be a time when the pain fades into just good memories, more or less. I didn’t think that I would think about Juli every single day. Literal. Not figural. Every single day. Sometimes its good memories…sometimes its bad memories. The worst are the memories from the day itself. May 24^th, 2017.

Juli was in the house, and Sarah wanted to go pick up a Craigslist thing she’d just bought. Sarah and I were just in a fight…something about parents, fittingly. I don’t recall exactly. I recall I didn’t want to go, but I knew she wanted me to go. Well, of course I like to be with her, but you don’t always want to jump in the car with someone you’re already fighting with. But I went along anyway and the fight quickly faded away. Ava was home…she was in school by then but this was mid to late afternoon. I recall Ava didn’t want to go with us. She wanted to stay behind with “Nina,” which is what Ava called Juli (Juli wanted to be called “Nana” but Ava always mispronounced it “Nina” when she was younger, so it stuck). We asked Juli and she said that that was fine. I remember Sarah and I were literally at the door to leave when Ava cried out that she had changed her mind and wanted to go. She really did seem upset, which was quite strange as she often stayed behind with Juli. I don’t believe in fate or anything like that…but that moment does seem somewhat fated to me. If Ava had stayed behind she would have seen Juli have that massive heart attack, and perhaps seen her die. Of course your mind always then thinks that maybe the EMTs had got there quicker, if Ava had remembered to call 911…we can’t know if Juli would have been able to remind her to do so. But, alternatively, perhaps the EMTs wouldn’t have got there at all. Or not until after we’d came home and seen her. Then there would have been no opportunity to say goodbye to her before we pulled life support…for whatever that moment was worth.

These are the things that your mind plays over and over. What if? It was a strong enough attack that it seems like it would have happened that way regardless. But, back to the moment we left to get the Craigslist thing.

Sarah and I quickly got over our fight and we were in fine spirits when we returned to the house. I remember laughing when we got out of the car to walk back in the house. There were no ambulances or EMTS there. Everything appeared normal. Except the neighbor was standing in our driveway. I remember thinking, for whatever reason, that he was there to make some kind of complaint. The only interaction I’d had with another neighbor was issues over parking placement. So I figured it might have been something about parking on the street or who knows. But he looked rather solemn and quickly we knew something had happened, although I can’t say I thought it was so grave or what it was exactly. I don’t remember his exact words, but it was something to the effect of she had a heart attack and collapsed and he had happened upon it. I still don’t know the exact sequence of events, or where exactly she was when it happened, but I didn’t think it was right to ask him about it. Sarah then asked if she seemed okay, which it still felt like she would be. Sarah’s dad had had heart issues before and gone to the hospital and everything had been fine. I’ll be honest, everyone thought that Juli would outlive him, so it was a great irony it happened the way it did. But the neighbor guy said that it had looked pretty bad. He didn’t say it quite that way, but he was having a problem putting it into words. He was the one that essentially told us there was a good chance she was going to die. We immediately got back into the car to drive to the Peacehealth on Mill Plain, which is about fifteen minutes away from the house. I remember Kevin—Sarah’s dad—calling and me answering (at least I think that’s how it happened, regardless, I remember this conversation). He asked if everything was okay and I said there was a chance…and then he sounded relieved. But I had to clarify that it didn’t look good…and that was the moment that our hope started to fall apart. I remember what Ava said on the way there…I remember the exact stretch of road we were on when she said it. When we pass by that way I often think about it. “I think I’m losing my buddy,” she said. Somehow she knew the gravity of the situation. It was the most heartbreaking thing I ever heard. She just knew.

I didn’t intend to write a recap of the events but it plays in my mind so often. I think about Juli every day, but luckily it isn’t always that day. Maybe only every other day.

As I said, I don’t remember the exact meeting with her. But I do remember her saying (at the time or in retrospect of this time, I can’t recall) essentially that I was different. Different, that is, when it came to other guy’s that had been interested in Sarah. Just like me Sarah hadn’t dated a whole lot, so it was really just guys who had wanted to date her. And I was different, according to Juli anyway. Now it was for real…I was marriage potential. But she wasn’t afraid of it. She was supportive right away. She thought I was the answer to their prayer’s for Sarah to meet a good man. I was never quite certain if I was fated to be that good man, but I’ve tried my best.

 It seems so bizarre, in retrospect, to think of someone being so supportive of a relationship between an 18 year old and a 16 year old. Somehow knowing that this was meant to be, as much as anyone ever can. That we would get married and have kids (I said I’d give her grandkids, because she badgered me about it, but that she had to wait until I was 25…Ava came a little earlier than the plan entailed). I mean I had just graduated high school and didn’t even have a job. I wouldn’t get one until Sarah and I had been dating for three months (WinCo cart clerk, baby!). She had confidence. I’m not sure Kevin had that same level of confidence but I think he trusted his wife about it. She said of course I was going to go to college and I would find a good job. I had no such confidence, and it wound up being six years before I started school…four years into Sarah and I’s marriage, and a year after Ava was born. She was one hundred percent sure. No one else in our lives was. My parents were not thrilled, which in retrospect I understand. Admittedly though, it made things difficult. Not having your parents share your excitement and plans was difficult, and I’ve never forgotten how that feels. Perhaps my mom will read this…probably…and its hard to type these words…but I have to be honest. It still hurts that they actively tried to sway us away from our decisions. They got married young and I think they were just trying to spare us those difficulties that they’d had. But that really didn’t come across with their actions and it just hurt me and drove us away. It also made Sarah having a good relationship with my family an impossibility, and it would be years before she grew close to them (which she did, eventually, and they have a good relationship…Mom considers her not just a daughter-in-law, but a friend). Regardless, Sarah and I weren’t to be stopped. I was fighting with my parents all the time after Sarah and I got together and Kevin and Juli let me move in. Which is crazy in retrospect but that’s just the kind of person she was (and Kevin still is). She knew we needed help. Kevin and her had also got together and knew the difficulty, but she wanted to be the person that they hadn’t had growing up. I don’t know if Sarah and I would have stayed together if she hadn’t been in our court.

Sarah I moved out eventually and got our own apartment. But a few years after we did I had two grand mal seizures and couldn’t work at my job because of the doctor’s orders. We really tried to get it together, and we could have possibly stayed if I had got my job back (I could work again after six months) but Sarah encouraged me to quit and to move in with her mom and Miles’s (Kevin and her had divorced in the meanwhile) house. I resisted at first and was absolutely against it. But I was miserable with my job, and going to college was at the same time was quite difficult. I eventually realized Sarah and Juli were right. So I quit my job and moved in. A few months later I transferred to WSU-Vancouver and got a part time work study job and I was more happy than I had been in years. During college Sarah and I had a few rough patches, because I went through I major bout of depression (even though life was better than ever) and I was mentally absent in my duties as a husband and a father during that time. I didn’t realize it at the time, but having her mom present and to help raise Ava potentially saved our relationship. Her mom and Miles were there to give us date nights, every week almost. We never had date nights for like three years after Ava was born and being able to go to the movies or hang out with friends made us feel young again, at least for those last few years she was alive. I remember we met our best friends Chad and Veronica right before the summer of ’14 and that summer we hung out with them almost every week it seemed like. We all got drunk and did stupid things and, at least for Sarah and I, we felt almost like teenagers again. We had one last summer as stupid kids.

Juli has been dead for nearly three years and things are not like that anymore. I feel firmly old and I understand things will never be that carefree again. But I am so grateful for those years where Juli was there to give us date nights whenever we needed one. Many times she was the one who ordered us to have one. She knew how hard it was being a young parent with not the greatest of means. She helped Sarah and I stay together more than once. I’m not sure I could have stayed in college if it wasn’t for her support. I don’t know if I would be two years into grad school without her help.

She knew I would get into grad school, she knew I would succeed. I did not, but when I did I could hear her words of celebration. I knew she would have, outside of Sarah, be my biggest cheerleader. She always was. I just had my first client as a counselor-in-training and I know she would have been over the moon thrilled for me. Knowing someone had your back like that…I took it for granted. Outside of Sarah I’ll never have that again. And that makes life seem a little grimmer, I’ll be honest. It’ll never have quite the same rosy, carefree glow.

To end on a slightly more positive note, I’ll quickly relay something that happened about two months ago. We were going through a bunch of Juli’s things and we stumbled upon a massive stash of Starbucks gift cards. She collected them, and there had to have been like 50-60 of them. In all practicality we decided to check if any of them had any money left. I wound up checking one by one, and sure enough a lot did have money on them. Some had like 12 bucks, some had 1.24. We uploaded them all to the Starbucks app, and it bought us several more trips to Starbucks. She was still paying our coffee, three years later. Even paid for one last date night trip there.

There isn’t much you can say that will help the pain. At some point things are more manageable of course. But it is always there. You carry it with you. And that hurts. It kills. But you carry it all with you. The pain, but also the memories. Even the good memories hurt sometimes, because you know there aren’t anymore. The finality of it all is something your brain can never quite grasp. In my mind it feels like we’re living in alternate timeline. Like we’re living in the alternate timeline from Back to the Future Part II, and somehow we can get back to the proper timeline where she lived. Where she is still there for us. But we go on. And we try to be good enough parents, friends, children, brothers or sisters that we will matter enough to hurt when we’re gone. We will wish that it won’t hurt, but the hurt just means that it was a damn good time while it was going.