12 Days to Go: The Unraveling, The Empty Chair, and The Overflowing Table
Coming home broke the dam.
We made the drive back over the Continental Divide, parked the trailer in the driveway, and by 8:00 this morning, I had already cried, argued with Matt, and felt entirely unraveled before the day had even begun.
When you spend weeks on the road in survival mode, you run on a quiet sort of adrenaline. You brace against the pain, manage the hours in the truck, keep up appearances for dinners with the kids, and tell yourself you are holding it together. Then you step back across your own threshold. The distraction of the open road disappears, and the full, suffocating weight of what lies ahead rushes into the house.
I didn’t sleep well. I was restless, uncomfortable and on and off awake all night long. My nervous system feels entirely frayed. But this morning, the physical agony wasn’t even the heaviest thing in the room.
Yesterday, my emotional reserves were tested in a way only motherhood can test you. I spent two long phone calls talking to our daughter Abby through her overwhelm. She has been flat on her back in bed with a nasty virus for four days, at the beginning of an academically intense semester ahead. When you’re a mom, your child’s distress instantly becomes your own.
Under normal circumstances, I probably would have headed to Boulder to drop off soup, give her a hug and a little extra comfort. But right now, the stakes are uncompromising: I have strict clinical orders not to get sick, or my reconstruction gets canceled. So, I am not getting anywhere near that virus.
It is an agonizing kind of helplessness to sit on the other end of that phone line. And this always ends up crystallizing as maternal guilt. Absorbing her distress while carrying my own took whatever reserves I had left and drained them completely dry.
And then there is the hollow, gut-wrenching ache for my own mom.
My mom has lived with dementia for several years now. She was my person. We were connected on the deepest level imaginable. Beyond being my mother, she was a nurse – a lifelong caregiver down to her very marrow. She would have stepped into this exact moment, taken charge of the room, managed the logistics, and made both Matt and me feel completely held and safe through the entire process. That is just one way that she always showed up for me.
Losing a parent to dementia is a strange, agonizing grief, because they are still here, yet the anchor you knew is gone. Facing a major two-day spinal reconstruction without her steady presence leaves an emptiness that takes my breath away. Today, staring down three back-to-back hospital appointments, I don’t want to be the strong teacher, the capable wife, or the resilient mother. I just want my mom.
On top of everything, yesterday brought a wonderful surprise that I wasn’t prepared for.
Unbeknownst to me, when we posted the YouTube video explaining my upcoming surgery, Matt included a note with an address for Five Parks Yoga – a P.O. Box he quietly set up. Yesterday afternoon, after we got home, he headed out to the post office and came back carrying an overflowing pile of cards and letters sent from all over the world.
When he walked through the door with them, and he explained to me what he had returned home with, tears started streaming down my face. .
I had no idea that was coming. Right now, they are sitting in a thick, messy pile on our dining room table. I look at them, and my chest tightens. It is a staggering wave of love, prayers, and human connection. But in this moment of raw vulnerability, I’m not sure I’m ready for it. To open them means letting in the magnitude of how much I am loved, how much this community cares, and just how monumental this hurdle is. It makes the reality of what is happening so big, so real, and right now, my heart feels too tender to hold it.
I look exhausted. I feel shattered. The friction with Matt this morning was just the spillover of two people carrying an impossible mountain of physical and emotional strain. When your body is trapped in chronic fight-or-flight from screaming nerves, you have no buffer left.
Today isn’t about composure. It isn’t about being graceful or finding the silver lining. It’s about facing pain management, sitting through the pre-op gauntlet at Porter Hospital, and letting myself be fragile.
Twelve days until surgery. Today, I just have to breathe, survive the appointments, and take this one step at a time.
