It’s 3am on Thursday, July 22nd, 2021. I can’t fucking sleep. At this point, I’m not certain when I will ever sleep through the night again. I’ve come downstairs and taken a lap around the kitchen, aimlessly figuring out what to do while awake at such an early hour. I load the dishwasher and start it. I soon find myself cuddled up in the corner of our couch near the window, narrowly avoiding any other place of the couch where we would typically prop her up in her boppy. I look up at the moon and find it surprisingly full, orange and beautiful. “I wonder if she can see this too”, I thought. Then I begin scrolling through Instagram and stumble upon a video of Zac Brown. He’s at a piano and playing/singing a cover of Bill Withers’ song “Lean on Me”. It’s exceptional….I wish it were a full cover though – he stops short after one verse & the chorus. Surely I did not stumble upon this by chance…I have to figure out a way to incorporate this into our memories of Stevie.
...Memories…she had died about 15 hours earlier, on Wednesday, July 21st, 2021.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The hours following our daughter Stevie’s death were surreal. Several times, even days later, we found ourselves hoping we would wake up from the worst nightmare anyone could imagine. We sat in the truck in the hospital parking lot shortly after the coroner picked up her body, with an empty car seat in the back.
Even in those moments shortly after her death, these questions/thoughts were already part of our conversation in the parking lot:
How were we going to tell our parents?
How were we going to tell our friends and co-workers?
How in the actual hell did this happen??
What are we going to do with all of her things??
Should we move away or move into a new house?
How are we ever going to make it through this?!
I am breastfeeding with no baby to feed. How do I wean?
What do I do with all the milk I have in the freezer?
We have to lean on each other through this
"You tell me when you’re having a rough time, and I’ll do the same, so we know where we both are at mentally"
And some of our fears were:
What if it was something we did? Are we to blame?
What if we could have prevented this?
What if this is something hereditary and we cannot have kids again?
Could we adopt?
When will we have sex again?
What if we do have another child or children…and this happens AGAIN?
Once we finally mustered up the courage to come home, we had arranged for both of our command teams to come to the house. In the hours waiting for them to come over, we made the first few dreaded phone calls. It’s really hard to describe the awful feeling of telling our parents and siblings. Was saying the words “she died” too callous? We had the words but it took a monumentous effort to actually speak them. Finally…“Stevie passed away today”. We immediately felt bad for ruining so many people’s days with the news. We poured out our hearts with every shred of information we could provide them, and as expected, everyone was so supportive. “You’ll get through this”, “Just be there for each other right now”, “It’s going to be really tough, but work through moment by moment”.
After telling my parents, we came downstairs to find our living room and kitchen full of people from our command teams. It was so great to see them. I have never hugged so many co-workers in my life before. I told all of them the whole story, what we knew and what we didn’t know and some of the things we feared. I remember telling them that I wanted to quit and never go back to work. Me…a woman who is highly career focused, who loves the military with my whole being, who knew the military was absolutely my calling – in that moment, I actually allowed myself to think about getting out. I then asked “How do people survive something like this?” Our military Chaplain, who later would become the man to speak at Stevie’s service in Omaha, said “What you have right now is each other. Focus on each other, lean on each other, and you will become stronger together through this.”
Some of the things we asked for from our co-workers:
A meal train of dinners. We knew we wouldn’t have the energy to cook.
Points of contact for military Mortuary Affairs and Casualty Affairs.
A list of support groups. We were burning to speak with other parents who had experienced similar trauma.
Anything to help us navigate arranging a service for Stevie.
Things we found extremely helpful the first day:
Having our command teams come to the house. I cannot say enough how awesome the military is. They dropped everything in a moment’s notice for us. Seeing familiar and supportive faces in those moments when we felt most alone and isolated was so comforting and something we will never forget.
Our supervisors easing the concern about time off. They said “Do not worry about time off. Take all the time you need. We will figure out it for you.”
Our command teams taking the smallest things off our plate – finding a list of support groups for us, getting us phone numbers for Military Family Life Counselors, arranging the meal train, and giving us a funeral home to work through for Stevie’s service.
We ordered a pizza for dinner. Then I pumped, because I had not all day…I figured the next day I would figure out how to donate my milk. Then I wanted to take a bath. I also remember contemplating, for a decent amount of time, whether I should drink a beer. Was that a poor coping mechanism? Probably, if it ended up getting out of control. But was it one singular thing I felt like I could make a decision about? Yes. So I got in the tub and drank a beer while Jared sat outside the tub, propped up against the wall. I remember asking him if he’d sit with me, because I didn’t want to spend a moment alone/without him.
We also tried to watch a show together that night before we attempted sleep. We decided on Schitt’s Creek. Mistakenly, we had forgotten that one of the main character’s names is Stevie. Damn…really?! How could we have forgotten that?? We still watched it though…seeking some sort of comedic relief…a break from crying…and a rest for our central nervous systems.