Crisis

An essay assignment for one of my classes that was about a crisis in my life.

My life has had its fair share of high’s and way, way low’s, but just a few years ago took the cake on everything… so far. At the end of September 2006, I received a phone call from my brother and it sounded like he was crying and trying to get himself together. I remember sitting in my living room and it was dark out already and I thought it was strange that he was calling me since my family became so text dependent. “Mom has cancer, breast cancer”, he said to me followed by dead silence which felt like it lasted forever. I just remembered flashing to seeing my father taking his last breath in front of me and my sister when he lost his battle to bladder cancer. I was never really the emotional driven one in my family; my sister took care of that department pretty well and my brother was pretty great with the dramatics. I wanted to break down, but I couldn’t I went into support mode for everyone else. Consoling my brother the best I could from where I was. I was living in Portland at the time.
We found out the evening of my sister’s birthday and we contemplated whether or not we should let her know the news then or later. I let my brother make that decision and shortly after we got off the phone he sent me a text saying he, “she knows.” I called her after receiving the text and just the sounds coming from her side of the line made me respond to her that I’d give her a few minutes and call her back. I called my mom right after that.
My mom is very similar to me where she doesn’t show much emotion. It takes a lot to make her breakdown and this situation was no different. It was very easy to talk to her and ask her what happened. She had been mentioning the last few weeks that she had to keep going back for lab tests and such, but you hope for the best. All I can remember is getting logically upset with her about was why she didn’t go get checked out when she first noticed the lump in her breast about a year earlier. However, I maintained my calm demeanor and continued to be the best support I could for her while she informed me of the surgery, chemo, and radiation therapy she would soon be under. She mentioned my dad and how she said that she’ll give it one shot and if it comes back, let it be. My father didn’t. He was already in his mid 70’s at the time and even though I was barely in my double digits, he felt no need to try to fight his battle and let it take him away from me slowly for several months.
I started making arrangements to come back home that next morning. I was working as a manager with The Cheesecake Factory, so luckily getting a transfer wasn’t going to be hard since there were a couple to choose from in the valley. I moved back home on October 14, 2006 and was happy to be reunited with my family. Apparently my mom’s cancer diagnosis wasn’t enough of a test to put all of us through to make sure family bonds stay strong. The evening I moved back home I stayed up until the late hours of the evening with my brother talking to him about his 2nd troubled marriage. It was hard on my side to try to defend the woman since we were all opposed to the union to begin with, but I tried my best to give my middle view input for him. You could tell that he was just a little off though, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time.
The next morning I headed to Disneyland with a friend that was visiting and my one of my brother’s best friends was getting us into the park free since he was an employee. I didn’t have his friend’s cell phone number, so I just went through my brother to get eta’s and such. The two times I spoke with him he made sure that I heard and acknowledged the phrase “I love you” when ending both calls. My family never showed affection to each other like that until I was about 16 years old. I was dating a guy that was really close to his mom and I thought that it was so nice that they’d say “I love you” and hug and stuff… So, I tried it on my family and luckily it caught on. That was the last time I spoke to him.
The following weekend, he was supposed to come down to take out his kids from his first marriage, but none of us had heard from him. So, I tried calling him when they got to our house and I left him a message. I was weird that all of us were in the room. My mom was saying that she wondered where he was this time, the hospital, jail, a friends, etc. My brother had a harder than normal life to say the least. Then his wife at the time called us.
It was around early afternoon time when she dropped the news. My mom asked her the same questions… “Was he in the hospital, etc.” and she simply responded back in a straight voice, “he’s dead”. The most ill sounding wailing erupted into the room, I never forget it. The first time I saw my mom scream and die at the same time. “They found his body this morning and came to notify me at work yesterday, I went last night to verify the items they found with him. He has been gone for a day or two, so the body is already in decomposition and they wouldn’t allow me to see him,” she continued. Once again, I went into damage control mode. I called a close friend (like a sister) to have her pick up my sister’s son from school and hold onto him for a little bit and told her why. I then started calling key cousins that I knew could get the message spread like wildfire and sent an email out to our family in the Philippines from my phone. It was so surreal and we were receiving the new from the worst possible person.
Needless to say things didn’t get any easier with trying to get the body back to my mom and it was one family up against another. We got through it though and my mom was able to bury her oldest child, her only son in peace finally next to her mother as well as her assigned gravesite. His four year anniversary has just passed, my mother is doing well and in remission, and all of his children are working their way through jr. high and high school right now. It was a trial for all of us and I almost lost my sister since she was so grief stricken, but we have all bounced back by coming together and realizing that the only thing the my mom, sister, and I have is each other first.

A Blog for Mon Cheri Bridals and Life Changes

So, I recently submitted this following blog to Mon Cheri Bridals for a chance to win a free wedding gown. It is great since I'd be able to blog on wedding plans to help keep my thoughts straight through the whole process. Anyways, there's a lot of new information here and hope I get the opportunity to win!

Church or causal? Small or large? Cocktail style or four course meal? Before the baby comes or after? Just when I thought I could have the opportunity to have a “do-over” wedding by marrying my true, true love, not rushing into anything, and learning that it’s ok to ask for help regardless of whether or not I’ve worked in the industry before, life has yet again decided to throw me a curve ball. Not that I still can’t have my dream wedding to my dream guy, it just gets a little more complicated now. Let me give you some background on Chris and myself.
Chris and I met at the tender age of six years old when we started first grade together at the same school. Let me tell you… all of the opposite sex had cooties except for Chris to me and me to Chris. We connected really quickly as you could in first grade without knowing it and we stayed with each other as much as we could. In second grade we finally had the guts to try a kiss on the cheek here and there and didn’t bother to wipe it off on either side. This basically went on up to about fifth grade when I transferred schools and he moved out of state with his family. We were able to reconnect through a mutual friend when I ended up going back to our original school for junior high. The summer of eighth grade was probably one of our best of our lives so far. We dated through the first part of high school since we were old enough now and were just as crazy over each other as we were when we were kids. But, we were hitting that age where differences showed us that we needed to learn to grow a little bit more before we would really be ready for each other. So, I graduated one year early and started my trek through adult life quicker than he did.
I found myself moving up to Portland, OR a few years back for work and to buy my first house. While I was there I met a guy, found out my mom had breast cancer, moved back to CA, had my brother pass away, moved back to Portland, and decided to get married in case my mom couldn’t recover from the cancer all in 6 months. So, needless to say I married a nice guy who I didn’t really know anything about and I tried to make it work, but it just wasn’t meshing and since I was his second wife and the first one wouldn’t really “go away” in the beginning. Good news was my mother recovered and I was missing my family really bad, so I filed for divorce, took personal leave from (Delta/NWA Airlines) and moved back to Los Angeles only to find myself being reunited once again with Chris.
Over one year later, the talk of marriage and family, and starting our own business (non-profit performing arts center) we are finding ourselves kind of starting backwards. I found out during spring break that I am pregnant, which we didn’t know I could, and are excited to be starting our family. However, it has kind of confused us as to what to do with the wedding now. We’d love to have the traditional Catholic wedding with all of our family and friends from when we were growing up and celebrate with a fantastic full service reception, but with the baby coming, we are thinking of the possibility of eloping or even just doing something really small with just family. Possibly right now we are leaning towards something small with just family, but the good old American dollar is going to be the dictator now. We are still working on my engagement ring!
So, there will be many and many and many of things and details to go through and update every week! Stay tuned!