A.K.A. Author S.K. Mueller
Content Advisory: Reader discretion is advised. This post contains Sandi’s personal story discussing sensitive subjects involving the deaths of children, grief, and themes around un-aliving oneself.* Guardians should consider whether young children are ready to read about these topics.
Natasha Parvey, who you might remember featured on Onward Sister, recommended Sandi tell her story here. (Check out Natasha’s story here). On social media, she tagged Sandi to check out Onward Sister’s Intro video. Sandi’s response was priceless: “I watched the video and checked out the website. It matches my vibe perfectly. Though I doubt I’m very interesting.”
Well, that’s just it. So many of us don’t think we are interesting enough to share our story. Which is exactly why I tell women on the front page: if you don’t think you’re interesting, you’re wrong. I had a feeling she was wrong, too.
When I mentioned I would be writing Sandi’s story to a friend, I was asked if I knew her story. The truth is, I didn’t know anything about Sandi. I knew she was an author in my community…that’s it. Then I learned why she wrote her book Jasper Finds a Home. It was one of those moments when time stops, and there are no good words to say, when nothing in the world makes sense.
The fact is, Sandi’s quite well known in the community for her beautiful children’s books and the profound life events that compelled her to publish.
It occurred to me then that I wanted to go into her interview without knowing her story. The story everyone knew was the tragedy she and her family had experienced. I wanted to meet Sandi first, as Sandi, and not her tragedy. Without asking anyone any more questions about her, without looking her up, and I didn’t read her book, especially after her comment about not being that interesting.
I deeply believe that the events in our lives shape us; they are profoundly connected to who we are. I never wanted to minimize Sandi’s experience in shaping who she is. But I wanted to hear it from her, as a sister, sitting across from her over coffee, for the first time. I wanted to allow her the opportunity to shape our friendship and first meeting from her own heart.
I hope you all get a sense of who Sandi is as a person, a mother, a wife, and a sister. She is strong, beautiful, resilient, bold, and honest, relentlessly climbing her mountain, and she is incredibly interesting.
I’m honored to give her a platform to share her deeply moving story.
You’re a published author. Is there any other work you want to talk about?
“I’ve been a pediatric medical assistant for 25 years.” Sandi became a Medical Assistant when her first child was four years old. She says she originally chose the career out of necessity. When her husband became temporarily unemployed, it seemed like the fastest way to make more than minimum wage; she chose it for her family, with her mother stepping in to help with childcare.
“That’s really what has defined me for a really long time. I love my job. I’ve been working with the same physician for 16 years. She’s actually getting ready to retire, and I’m having high anxiety and a mild panic attack.
“I actually went back to school to be a nurse when I found out I was pregnant with my youngest,” Sandi said. She realized there was no way she wanted to do school and pregnancy at the same time, so she decided to continue as an MA, having already been in practice for 10 years. “That’s a disaster.” She has since tried to go back to school a couple more times, but says she doesn’t like school enough to do it.
“I’m destined to be a medical assistant, and that’s fine. I’ll retire from that, and that’s ok. I really do love my job, and I love my patients. We are now into second generation. You talk about feeling old,” she laughs. “That’ll get you there in a hot second.
“When those kids come in, and you’re like, ‘Wait a minute. You’re my patient, and you have a baby…that’s not ok.’ It’s cool that they trust us enough to bring their children to see us. I will not be there for the third (generation). Nope, nope, nope. That’s too much.”
What’s something you’re good at?
“I’m proud of my career (Pediatric MA). I’m very good at my career. And don’t like to toot my own horn very much about that. But I scare people at my job.”
This made me chuckle, but I had to ask why. “Trainees, specifically. That’s because I feel very strongly about pediatrics. A lot of people think, ‘Oh, kids. Kids are easy.’ People are scared of pediatrics. They’re scared of kids because of the vaccines that we have to give, and there’s a lot of shots.
“I’ve always been very, very outspoken about it when it comes to that. For a lot of years, we had people come down to train, and the first words out of their mouths were, ‘I don’t like kids.’ Get out of my department. Because if you don’t like kids, I don’t want you here. That means you’re going to be shaky, and you’re not going to respond to kids. I don’t have the patience for that.
“You have to connect with the parents. Give them that sense of safety. And kids pick up on it. If you’re going to be giving shots, I need you to have that confidence. I kind of developed a reputation of being a b***h.” Under the layers of toughness, Sandi reveals what truly drives her at work: protecting the kids. She also admits she gives patience and grace to students new to medicine, helping them decide whether pediatrics is the right fit for them.
“I’m very protective of my patients. I’ve been doing it long enough to spot someone who will be good at our job ahead of time. And I give honest feedback.”
Do you think you’re different than who you wanted to be?
“Oh yeah, I wanted to be a fighter pilot when I was a kid. I definitely wanted to be in the military. I thought I would be lean and mean. And then, I found out girls weren’t allowed to be fighter pilots.”
They are now.
“They are now, yeah. Had I thought about it and been strong enough and brave enough, because I was not brave as a kid, not even a little bit, I would have been one of the first if I had just been brave enough to pursue it. Because what was it, two years out of high school, I think the first woman fighter pilot came to be. And I remember thinking…son of a…dang it. That could have been me. So close, if I just would’ve kept going.
“But I met my husband. Whatever, I got married at 19. So yeah, definitely different than what I envisioned as a kid.”
Growing Up
“As a kid, I couldn’t have even imagined being married. I think that’s because I came from divorced parents. My mom was amazing and never… it sounds sad… but she only ever had one other relationship besides my father. And it was not healthy. So, she was like, ‘peace out,’ and never again.
“I was very blessed by the fact that I never dealt with a mom that was going through men. She was like, ‘Nope, absolutely not’.”
Sandi goes on to describe her mother as a reluctant feminist who was very traditional and never saw herself as one. Graduating high school in 1955, she came from a generation that often defined a woman’s place as the home. Although traditional, her mother would, in the same breath, say she didn’t need a man.
Sandi shares that, even though she feels lucky she didn’t have to deal with stepfathers or boyfriends, or ‘any of that garbage,’ as she put it, she didn’t see a traditional relationship. Therefore, she couldn’t picture herself in one.
“And then, when I met Bryan at 17, my mom was like, ‘Oh, hell no. What are you doing? You’re going to college.’ Of course, I was that sassy, rebellious teenager, and I had to argue with everything she said. But then she fell in love with him too, because he was pretty great, and he won her over.
“But even on our wedding day, she was like, ‘Are you sure? I’ll help you get out of here now.’ It was terrible! She was terrible. You know his parents were doing the same thing to him? His sister actually said to him, ‘I got the car out back.’ That’s a whole different story.
“Now, we’ve been married for 32 years so that everybody can kiss our butts. We have four kids, and this isn’t what I envisioned, but I’m good with it. Don’t get me wrong, I think it would be awesome to be a badass fighter pilot, but I can’t imagine that now. No way. That would have been a very different life. Very, very different. I can’t even know or imagine.”
Is there anything you would still like to accomplish or experience?
“Oh, the list is too long. It’s huge.
“There are places I want to go, travel-wise. There’s things I want to do as an author. I’m self-published, of course; I wouldn’t mind being traditionally published. I’d love to be discovered. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t die, but it’d still be cool. You know, I don’t want to be famous or anything, but I would still think it would be neat to have somebody else do all the marketing.”
Sandi gives that strained laugh I’ve heard from other Indie-published authors. I know from my own line of work: the common thread is that getting seen is one of the hardest parts for most writers, artists, and content creators. “Get a paycheck instead of just counting my money at the end of an event.
“To be debt-free. We were so close, and then my husband was like, ‘I want a shop…so.’ But, you know, things like that.”
I could see in Sandi’s eyes as she sifted through the Rolodex of life events she’d still like to experience. Her face brightened the moment she landed. “We have one grandchild, so I’m excited to have more of those.” She explained that her second daughter lives in Arkansas and will, at some point, start a family as well, so she anticipates regular travel to be with them. “Definitely splitting our time between here and there.”
Again, she drifts through her mind’s eye. “Just being able to travel with my husband is a big one. I definitely want to go to Europe. My husband doesn’t really have a desire to do it, but he doesn’t have a choice.”
Is he going with you?
“He’s either going with me, or I’m going by myself. That’s it. That’s his choice…he can choose not to go with me. But I will be going at some point.
“I love that history, and I’m into genealogy. I know my ancestry”
So, checking out the places where your family is from?
“Absolutely. Plus, I’m an enormous Outlander fan, so I’m going to see Scotland. I will be seeing the Fraser stuff.”
Yes, I’m sadly looking forward to her final book. It’s been a good run, though.
Sandi and I shared a couple of minutes of book clubbing over Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander stories and her journey as an author. Something I absolutely love is how books and stories bring us together.
Becoming an Author
“I’m really proud of my first book. It’s a true story.” Sandi explains that her book, Jasper Finds a Home, came “out of the blue.” She and her husband were sitting at their dining table six months after their son Alex was involved in an accident that resulted in his passing when the story revealed itself as needing to be written.
“It was him. I really believe my son fueled this. That he was like, ‘Mom, you need to write this. You need to go to your computer, and you need to do this.’ I literally went and got the laptop, and the story popped into my head.” She describes sitting in silence with her husband, without him questioning her, as her tears rolled through the process.
“Bryan and I kind of had that relationship that we don’t look at each other and ask, ‘What’s wrong?’ Because, hello, six months after losing your child, you don’t ask each other what’s wrong. You just let it happen. If you feel the need to step in, you do. But you just kind of leave each other alone. At least, that’s how we are.”
When she was done writing the story, she wiped her eyes, blew her nose, looked at her husband, and said, “I just did something. Do you want to know what it is? It’s going to make you cry.” His response: “I kind of figured it would.”
Sandi read the story to her husband and described a very emotional experience between them. “At the end, I sat there and looked at him, waiting for him to say something. He goes, ‘Well, what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do with that?’ I said, ‘I have no idea.’ And he said, ‘Well, you better figure it out.’ Wow. Well, thanks. Super helpful, honey.
“I figured it out.”
Did you ever think you would become an author before then?
“I was blogging in high school English class, and I really enjoyed writing. My teacher told me I was good at it. I’ve always kept a journal from the time I can remember.
“When our oldest daughter, Megan, was little, I wrote her a book. But the internet wasn’t really a thing, so it was just something I read to her before bed. I wrote her a little song too. She was my only child at the time; we did those things with each other.” The story was recovered from an old hard drive and became Sandi’s second published book, The First Day of School.
“I knew I’d always had a creative streak, whether it was scrapbooking, painting, or rug-hooking, or whatever the hell that stuff was called when I was younger. I always wanted to do something creative. But I’ve always been doing words in my head.
“And so, I think deep down, it was there under the surface. To this day, I still have a notebook from high school full of my poetry.”
Sandi started blogging about the difficulties of raising her son Alex, as well as the loss of her mother, which, at the time, she felt was the worst pain in her life—she still finds herself reaching out to people who have lost their mothers. “I was writing about that boy of mine, and doing a blog before I lost him. So, in all honesty, it was because of him, because he was a pain in the a** to raise. I was writing a lot of those ‘I’m going to murder my child’ kinds of things because he was feral. I have said it multiple times. I have never been quiet about how hard he was to raise.
“But that’s because I did not know. It would never have crossed my mind that I would lose my kid. You don’t go there in your brain. Nobody sits there and goes, ‘But I might lose my child one day, so I might not want to call this the worst pain in my life.’
“I am self-publishing these books, and I am now continuing down this path because of my child. I don’t know that I would have been brave enough to do it if I had not lost him. I really don’t.”
What do you tell people got you starting writing?
“It’s such a hard question to answer because I don’t want to lie about it, but at the same time, I almost don’t want to answer because I don’t like the pity purchase. And that’s what it almost always leads to. If I answer honestly, they feel compelled to buy a book. I don’t like that. I don’t want to be that person.
“Some people would be like, ‘ You’re crazy; that’s smart marketing.’ No! That’s not what I want. I’d rather they buy the book, read the introduction, then read about him. So, now I preempt it with, ‘I’ll tell you, but you’re not allowed to buy a book after this, and you’re not allowed to cry.’
“Then, I tell my story, and I fail every time. So, I’m stuck in that space where I don’t really know how to answer the question. I’m working on that. I don’t want not to be authentic…because it’s the truth.”
Writing has become a path to herself.
“Being able to talk at the schools, at the libraries, at book signings, it’s been good for me. And it’s keeping Alex’s story out there and helping me tell it. It’s helping me share a little more about him with kids who need to hear it. My husband goes with me to almost everything.
“It’s helping me heal a little bit at a time, even though I’ll never be fully healed…ever. It’s still helping me a tiny bit at a time. And I needed that.
“I was thinking about this on the way here; being an author is really the first time I’ve ever done something for me. It’s the first time I’ve done something that’s defined me, and it hasn’t been something I’m doing for somebody else. Whether it’s the kids, my husband, my patients, or whatever.”
Sandi finds this new part of her life a strange place to be. Despite doing it alongside her job and being a mom, and despite how hard the work is, she feels ‘liberated.’ Having always been crafty and often trying different things, being an author feels different to her. This isn’t a hobby to her. “I think it’s always needed to come out.”
Being a Mom
With a smile across her face, Sandi lights up, sharing photos of her family with me and telling me little details and stories about each of her children. It’s clear her children fill every space in her heart and have been the center of her life. Each photo brings a flash of a memory into her eyes. I recognize the love and joy that is motherhood.
Megan
We learned a little about Megan when Sandi talked about writing her a book and a song when she was little. Now 29, she has a family of her own. Megan’s husband and her brother, Nathan, actually share a birthday. Sandi delights in talking about her 3-year-old grandson and seeing him often.
“We love him. I adore him, and he is his own little person. He struggles with his verbal milestones, but he’s unlocking his language skills, and every one of his little achievements is sweet.”
Faith
“Faith is our second-born. She and her boyfriend live in Arkansas. She’s a crime scene investigator. My kid is a bada**. She’s amazing. I live vicariously through my kid. I adore her.”
Alex
“If there was a rule to break, that kid broke it. And I have found out a whole lot more since I’ve lost him about all the rules he broke. Wow! So many things.
“What would have been his 19th birthday, one of his absolute best friends…like one of the kids I love…put a Snapchat up about how much he missed him. But the problem was that the photo he used was my child in his sister’s room with a can of hairspray on fire.”
That was the first you had heard about that?
“Nobody knew about this photograph, except, apparently, those two boys. I was like, ‘Oh! That’s Faith’s room! I guarantee that’s her hairspray. What the hell?’ I sent him (Alex’s friend, Angel) that exact message back. He’s like, ‘Sorry, Mom.’” Her daughter had no idea the boys had done that either. “I was livid!
“So, I’m chewing my child out…who is not with us. I was cussing him out. But I still have it saved on my phone because, of course, it’s still a memory. Even though it’s not my memory. I showed him (her husband). I said, ‘Do you want to see what your son did?’ He said, ‘Son of a…Is that Faith’s room?’ Yes, it is.”
Sandi smiles at the memory. She tells me how several months after his passing, she would tell the kids, his friends, if she didn’t know about it before, and it’s something she would be mad about, that she didn’t want to hear it now. “I know there’s plenty, because there is. He was just…there was awful, awful stuff he did. He was just terrible.”
She pauses a moment, remembering on her face. “I did the talking at his memorial because I was like, ‘Nope. I can’t let somebody else get up there and talk about him. I just can’t’… Nobody…I won’t say nobody knew him better. A lot of people knew him differently than I did, and that’s fine. But I felt like my husband and I knew him best. But my husband could never have spoken, because he’s not that guy.”
Sandi thinks for another moment. “Oh, I lost my train of thought. It’s gone. That happens to me a lot. I’m telling you, grief brain is a thing. Even three years later, it’s still a thing.”
You spoke at his memorial because you knew him best. And he was very mischievous.
“Thank you. I said he shoved so much life into those 16 years. He lived as much as he could in that short amount of time. And you know, he told me multiple times, ‘I’m not gonna live to be an adult.’ Oh, I would see red. And because, as the parent of a teenager, you instantly think s*****e (un-aliving oneself). You instantly go there. Nope. I think he knew.
“I’ve even talked to a therapist about that. He just knew. Some people just know.”
He never said more about that to you?
“He would just say it.” She would wonder if he knew he was tempting fate, knew he was going to be reckless. “I never knew. I will never know. He would say it multiple times.” She even tried to talk about his 21st birthday someday. He replied that he wasn’t going to make it to 21.
“He’d be like, ‘Sorry, Mom, it’s just facts.’ I get goosebumps now thinking about him saying that, and I get so mad at him. But, yeah…” Sandi’s words faded under the weight of the memory.
“I am gonna try to make it through this without tears. I don’t know if I’ll make it, but I’ll try.”
You do whatever you do. There is no expectation from me.
“You don’t want to know what I do. I’m a wreck.” She laughs a little more lightly as we move forward.
Nathan
When Sandi and Bryan’s kids were still fairly young, she started to feel unwell. In fact, Sandi was so ill that she wondered if she had something serious or had started early menopause, missing her cycles entirely for nearly a year. She was absolutely shocked to find out she was pregnant with their youngest child.
“And so our three became four, and I had the best video of telling them we were pregnant. We set all three of them down on the couch. Megan lost her mind. Like, balling.”
Was she happy?
“Well, we even asked that question. ‘Are these happy tears?’ She’s like, ‘I don’t know…’ Like, she’s just losing her mind. Alex is playing with the pregnancy test. We’re like, ‘Yeah, we don’t need to be playing with that…’ And then Faith is like, ‘We could have a hundred kids!’
“She wanted to name the baby Josie because we watched a lot of the Duggars back then. And we’re like, ‘No, we’re not gonna name it…maybe we should find out if it’s a girl or boy.’ And so within one week, we found out we were having a baby, that I was five months along, and that it was a boy.
“I found out on April Fool’s Day of all things.”
Your dates! What’s with your dates?
I’m shocked at the uncanny way dates line up for Sandi. Throughout the interview, I notice big events overlap dates. I couldn’t help but find the irony in her finding out about a surprise pregnancy, which was 5 months along, on April Fools’ Day.
“I know our dates are crazy. So that was nuts. That’s how we became four.”
Now 16, Nate is scheduled to get his driver’s license. For his birthday, a family friend gifted him with a truck. Sandi said he is just jonesing to start driving it, and she is not jonesing for the insurance cost.
“From now on, I’m going to try really hard not to hyperfocus on the fact that he will now be doing everything Alex didn’t get to do. It’s a hard one. I’m gonna try really hard. I don’t want that to be part of his growing up because he’s already thinking about it. He doesn’t need me to mention it as well.”
What do you think your strengths are?
“Three years ago, it would have been a very different answer because I would have just flat-out told you, ‘I have no idea.’ Now, it’s weird. People will tell you that I’m strong because I can function. I don’t see myself as strong at all. I really don’t. And every grieving mother will tell you the same thing. I have learned that. We do not see ourselves as strong. We don’t see ourselves as survivors. We see ourselves as ‘we’re breathing’.
“But, one of my strengths…is being able to help other grieving moms.
“One thing I found out is that, around here anyway, there are no groups for grieving parents. Even if you’re part of a church, they don’t exist. We looked. There is a place called the Dougy Center in Portland. It’s more for children who have lost their parents, and not necessarily for children who have lost siblings.”
Sandi explains that they tried to attend the Dougy Center, but it wasn’t quite the right fit. Their younger son, Nathan, who was 12 at the time, was the only child who had lost a sibling and did not have anyone to relate to, and the other children were quite young.
Since attending an in-person grief group didn’t seem to work, Sandi turned to social media. “I don’t hate social media. I love it because it’s easy for me. I was always a phone talker as a teenager. All my friends and I, we could talk on the phone for hours. And so, to me, it’s just an extension of that.”
When Alex was in the hospital, Sandi found it easier to post updates on Facebook at night than to write an exhaustive reply to everyone’s individual texts. She and her husband had a large friend group, including family, friends, and colleagues. After being featured on the news, Sandi received an outpouring of supportive messages from other grieving moms.
“I thought it was so extraordinary that these women who either heard it on the news, heard about it on Facebook, or knew somebody that I knew, whatever the connection was, were feeling brave enough and thought that my child was special enough that they would reach out to me through social media. I thought it was so sweet.”
Grief Sisters
“So, since then, I thought, you know what? These moms don’t have a group. They don’t have a tribe. They’re just out there by themselves. So I started Grief Sisters (a private Facebook group).” Sandi created the group on Facebook as an extension of the connections she made with other grieving mothers. Only later did she realize there were women in the group she actually knew. She expressed the guilt she felt having realized she was not supportive of others in the way she wished she would have been before losing her own son.
“The group is for women who have raised, then lost children. It’s not for people who have a stillbirth or a miscarriage, because that is a completely different kind of grief. This is for babies we held, babies we raised. There are now 64 of us, and we’ve grown in 2 years.
“We share a baseline of pain that we all understand,” Sandi explains. The women in the group have experienced different traumas that others in the group will never understand, but they do understand their shared baseline pain. “They can’t understand me sitting in a room for six days while my child is in a coma, not responding…we can’t understand or relate to extenuating circumstances, but we still get that baseline pain. And it connects us in that way.
What about the fathers?
According to Sandi, her husband, Bryan, didn’t seem to care (about not being in a group). “I think lately, he’s starting to care. My husband’s all by himself. The dads are always pushed to the side. They have nobody. And sometimes that is them saying, ‘I don’t want to talk about it. No, thank you.’ They don’t want to go to therapy. They don’t want to do the things.
Just like teenagers don’t want to go to therapy, they’re like, ‘I’m fine. I’m fine.’ They are so far from being fine, especially the teenagers. But you can’t make them. So, I’ve felt very compelled to start an in-person support group for parents, not just the moms.” Reaching out to Grief Sisters, Sandi has found that many would come if an in-person group for moms and dads were available. “This is not therapy. I’m not a therapist by any stretch of the imagination. I have none of that training. It would literally just be support for both moms and dads.
“So, if I had to say I had a strength, it would be being able to connect with those parents who need that and being able to support them and say the right things. And also to advise people who haven’t gone through it on how to support someone who is going through it.
“That’s why helping people who have lost somebody, I think, feels very natural. Because I hate to say it, I’m just really good at grief. I’m just really good at it. I know what to say, what to do, what they need, and can tell them, ‘You’re not crazy.’
“We are cheated out of the lives we were supposed to see develop in front of us, about who they were supposed to be, who they were supposed to bring into this world, and who they were supposed to love. And they are not supposed to go first. That is not the natural way of the world. And we are cheated, and it pisses us off.”
On Loss
The Hard, Raw Truth About Grief
While writing Sandi’s story, I struggle with how to title this section. The word grief either fits or it doesn’t. No single word can capture the vastness, depth, or individual experience.
One word, or any words for that matter, never do enough to capture what the heart and body feel after such loss. However, it is a word we all know.
In Sandi’s story, the word “grief” takes shape only through the feelings she can articulate. I humbly ask readers to refrain from judgment.
The Process
“I don’t care if somebody has written a book about it (grieving). It’s only right for whoever wrote it, because no two situations are the same.
“You know, it’s funny people say, ‘ Oh, everybody grieves differently. That’s bulls**t. Everybody does not grieve differently. You grieve exactly the same. It just hits you at different times. I promise you, every single grieving parent has screamed into their pillow, has wanted to break something, has wanted to leave the earth, has been pissed off. It just depends on when that hits. Whether or not they do it out loud or silently.
“But we’re all grieving the same. And you can say there’s seven stages of grief. Yeah, there probably are. But I can promise you they don’t come in order. And they don’t come one at a time, and then they’re done. No. They can come all at once, and you don’t know how to sort through them, and you don’t know which one you feel from one minute to the next.”
It comes in waves.
“It’s a cluster. One thing that definitely happens. We call them sneaker waves. And I’ve heard them refer to that over and over and over again, because I can be walking down the hall at work, cleaning a room, doing whatever. Nothing has to happen to me, and I will literally start bawling for no reason at all. It just hits me out of the blue, no rhyme or reason.
“And I have seen my son. I have heard his voice. I have smelled him. I have had multiple songs…he was very into music. He had certain songs that he would blast from that bedroom. He could sing decently. I wouldn’t call him any crooner or anything, but he would sing along to his songs. Nathan, the same thing. And if I am thinking about him or we are talking about him, that song would come on like clockwork. It is uncanny.”
What do you think about that?
“I know it’s him. I know it’s him.”
What is something you don’t want to admit you are afraid of?
Without pause, Sandi told me, losing another child, or losing her husband. But after processing that, she said she wasn’t afraid to admit it at all. She was quiet, digging deep to find her truth. “Honestly, I actually know. You know what I’m afraid of admitting?
“I’m afraid of admitting that I was close to being suicidal when I lost Alex. I don’t want people to know that I got that low.”
Do you want me to leave that out?
“Nope. Because I think a lot of parents get there. I know a lot of parents get there.
“One reason I didn’t let myself get to the point where it was a scary space of needing to check myself in somewhere is that I knew if I did anything to hurt myself, my husband would not survive it, and I would put my children into a space where they would never, ever recover.
“Because they were already protecting me from their feelings. All three of the kids never grieved in front of me, which makes me mad at myself. It makes me mad that I was such a wreck that I wasn’t somewhere they could go. That they had to hold back because they knew- they’ve all said this to me- that they couldn’t be sad in front of me because it would make me worse. And that makes me mad at myself.
The Kids’ Grief
“I have yet to see a Nathan cry. I’m not even sure if I saw Faith cry.” Sandi took a long moment to reflect. “Megan cried because I was crying. Megan has been more…Megan cried at the hospital. But Megan had Adam (her husband), so she very much turned to him. Rightfully so.
“Faith has been my most shut down because she said, ‘I said goodbye to him at the hospital.’ And then she beat feet. She went to college, and she hasn’t been home since. She took off to Arkansas, and she was out of sight, out of mind. She’s had moments there, she’s told me.
“Nathan’s been the most p**sed off because he’s like, ‘Well, Meg’s got her life with her baby and her husband, and Faith left, and I’m here, surrounded by Mom and Dad and all of Alex’s stuff. And I still get to go to school with all his friends, and all the mementos and awards that Mom and Dad do in his honor. And I’m left holding back.’
“So, I knew that if I allowed myself to get lower than I already was or act on it, Bryan would follow me, and my kids would never recover. So I knew I couldn’t. They were my ‘why’ for not doing it.
“And I knew my son would…If what I think happens after you die is true…my son would be pissed as hell. And when I crossed that veil, he would have literally lit into me like nothing else. I’m not going to incur that wrath because I incurred it when he was here, and he was no fun to be around when he was pissed off. I can just imagine what it would be like the other way around.
“I’ve been afraid to…” Sandi goes into her thoughts for a moment again. Leaving it there, she tells me about her husband.
“Bryan was there too. We kind of talked about it a little bit together, about how you wake up and you don’t want to be here. He has always been very reliant on me. We kind of have that kind of marriage. I worry about as we age, and we get into that space of, when one of us goes, will the other be close to follow? You know, that kind of marriage? I’m terrified of that because I’m like, no, don’t, don’t do that. Stick around for the kids.
“Even though my parents were not married, I was not close with my dad. Losing them within a month of each other was awful. Yeah, that was awful. It was unbelievable because I was super close with my mom, and I lost my dad first. Then a month later, you know what she said to me? She said, ‘Well, at least I beat him. He went first.’ Worst thing ever. No. She was all about competition with her. But, I mean, the kids don’t need that. You know what I mean? Stick around.
“And so I just knew if, if anything, if I did anything, it would be disastrous.”
For everyone?
“Yes. No, I’m not going to do that to my kids.”
You chose for them?
“They were my ‘Why.’”
Sandi shared a deeply personal story about a mother in her Grief Sisters group. This military veteran did three tours in Afghanistan on active duty, an incredibly tough woman who barely survived her child’s passing. “I am in awe of her, and yet my heart is broken for her. And that should tell anybody the level of pain that we’re talking about.” And the extremely serious realities of mental health while grieving the loss of a child. “It’s it’s it’s a whole different level.”
We talked a little more about why grieving parents choose to end their own lives. Sandi feels strongly that she is not one to judge. We talked about the many layers of these decisions. “It’s just…not my place.” I, too, stand in no place of judgment.
“I’ll tell you right now, I’m not a good enough Christian or a good enough human to judge anybody for any decision they’ve made. Not that kind of decision. Not my place.
“And I know way too many moms and dads whose children have decided to see themselves out. I sure as hell wouldn’t tell them that their kids were selfish. It’s mean.”
No. You can’t, know what’s going on inside the individual.
“What I know is that those mothers are broken. Forever. And they have the largest amount of guilt that I can’t even wrap my brain around.
“And I have a good amount of guilt. But not like theirs. Because they blame themselves for not seeing or knowing that their kid was that sad. And why didn’t I see it coming? And why didn’t I stop it?
How do you support somebody going through grief?
“For god’s sake, do not ever say it was God’s plan. Do not say it was God’s will, and stop saying you’re sorry. Stop saying it. Because we are sick to death of hearing ‘I’m sorry’; we want to punch you in the throat. Yeah, if you don’t know what to say, don’t say anything.
“Say I love you and give us a hug. That’s all you got to do.
“And I swear to god, unless you know for a fact that the person is ultra-religious, leave God out of it. I had the sweetest woman, I know who means well, that I love to death; tell me it was God’s plan. I quite literally wanted to take her out.
“So the last thing that a parent wants to hear is that God chose for your child to leave this earth. You don’t want to think that God chose that for you. It’s a hard one. Yeah, I don’t care what your belief system is. That’s a hard one to swallow.
“But somebody who hasn’t gone through it, they just don’t know what to say. And the ‘I’m sorry’ thing is just a blanket. You’re trained to say that, and I get that. That’s why I don’t jump down anybody’s throat. And you say thank you, and you move on. But, man, after you’ve heard it 500 times, it’s like nails on a chalkboard. And it’s hard, but people don’t know. They don’t know what to say, you know.
“One of the worst ones, though, is ‘At least you have other kids’.
You can’t be serious?
“Oh, I’m dead serious.” Sandi expresses that the worst, though, is when people think she should be over and done with her grief. Especially people who have been close to her through it. For her, it happened at the two-year mark. “They’ll say things like, ‘Why aren’t you okay?’
“Well, my kid’s still dead, so I’m never going to be okay. Still gonna have days where I don’t even want to be breathing, let alone out of my bed, functioning, at work, and smiling.
“And really, in fact, I had to have it out with somebody. And I literally looked at her, and I said, I want you to go home, and I want you to look at your two boys, and I want you to pick one of them, and I want you to wake up tomorrow. And he doesn’t exist. Tell me how that makes you feel, because that’s my reality every day.
“She didn’t like that. They can’t put it into perspective like that. They think I should be okay because it’s been two years. My kid’s still not here. Hello? He didn’t just move away. Yeah, he’s not here.
“Which one of your kids do you want to live without? Pick one because I didn’t get to choose. So quit being an a** and making it seem like I should just be fine now.”
I also don’t have good words for Sandi right now. I said it is hard to wrap our minds around why people do things or think things are ok during grief. I do acknowledge Sandi’s recognition that people truly don’t know what to do for someone in this kind of pain. Her willingness to advise loved ones and friends on how to support others in grief is no doubt challenging, but needed and appreciated.
“I just really want parents who’ve lost kids to know they don’t have to do it alone. There is a tribe out there of people who absolutely understand, and everything that they’re feeling and going through is normal. They’re not crazy. There’s resources out there.* They just need to know who to ask, and there are people they can talk to to get it.”
One remembers when the other forgets.
Husband Bryan and Sandi both have personal journeys through their family’s tragedy, but they share one too. Sandi recalls a time when she learned to be more careful about saying some things out loud.
“Nathan wasn’t even a whoops. He was a whoa, crap. What happened? I said something to Bryan, and he did not like it when I said this, and rightfully so; he had every right to yell at me. I told him, ‘I almost wonder if we got Nathan because God knew that we weren’t going to get to keep Alex.’
“Oh, he did not like it when I said that. No, he yelled at me, and my husband doesn’t yell at me. It was that ‘God’s plan thing.’ You know how sometimes things in your head shouldn’t come out of your mouth? That’s what it was. I said something that I shouldn’t have said out loud.”
Was it just for you?
“Yep. It was just for me. And I let it come out, and I should not have.”
Yeah, well, we do that.
“Oh, I do it more than I should. That’s that broken filter thing. And I instantly felt so bad; I was like, oh, honey, I’m so. I’m sorry. He’s like, ‘Nope.’ I’m like, okay. That is one lesson I have learned. Believe it or not, it’s when to shut my mouth. And I have never been good at that.
“Like, if you would go back on a lot of report cards. Nope. Not a strength of mine.”
Do you think that is a good thing that you’ve learned?
“Yeah, it is. I do have that tact of knowing when to stop. Because I, I was very much a button pusher, especially when I was young. I really like to get a rise out of people, especially siblings. I was most definitely that sister to the point where it was detrimental to my health. They were allowed to swap me and punish me, and I did not like it. And they just thought that was fine. I can honestly say the only spanking I ever got with the belt was not from a parent. My sister did not give a s**t. She was ruthless.”
The Passing of Time
“Time is also a very weird thing. In one sense, it moves at a snail’s pace; in another, it feels instant. It’s really strange. I lose huge chunks of time.
“Bryan and I actually talked about this last night—our time in the hospital. For him, it’s a blur. He doesn’t remember. And it’s seared into my brain. I remember every single solitary moment. But there are other things I have forgotten completely, beyond what he remembers. It’s just bizarre. It’s almost like our brains were connected. What he can’t remember, I can, and vice versa.
“I don’t know if you’re like this with your kids, but every moment in our life has always been gauged by how old a child was. Now, it’s everything pre-accident, post-accident. Was Alex here for it, or wasn’t he?
“If it was post-accident, it’s a question of whether I can remember it or not. And it was really odd.
“You feel mentally disabled. That’s what your brain does.” Sandi actually talked to her therapist about changes in the brain. Her therapist told her the pain from losing a child is so severe that the brain cannot process it. Therefore, it doesn’t process anything. It blocks and stops processing some information to protect itself. She said it’s why people may sleep more.
“I was like, why does this happen? And she goes, ‘Because the pain from losing a child is so severe that your brain literally cannot process it. So it doesn’t process anything. It just blocks; it just stops. It protects itself. So, it just doesn’t. It will only take in a certain amount of information and then just stop.’
“And I was like, ‘But I don’t sleep.’ She said, ‘Well, you sleep more than you think. You just don’t get a deep sleep. But you are sleeping more than you realize.’ And that’s why I lost big chunks of time. And I was mean to people. I couldn’t handle anybody being happy. Don’t be coming into my house all happy.”
Does happiness still bother you sometimes?
“Oh yeah. Even if I don’t even know it, it’s a hard day. Sometimes just a song on the radio that means nothing to me will piss me right off. And I have to turn it off. I think the only two things that never make me angry are a happy child or a dog. Those will always make me smile. And I think that’s why my job is easier for me to do than most.
“Now, apparently, everybody on the planet named their kid Alex. Oh my god, I hear that all the time, at least once a week. I’m like, why, people? Why?
“Alex was such a dog person. I can’t ever not love dogs. Yeah, except my own. I want to kill them half the time. Well, they can’t be outside together. They run away. They’re so naughty.
“But, no, there are just days that I just…I just can’t. I hate it, because there are days my husband can’t, and yet he does. And I don’t think it’s fair because he refuses just to take a day off. He won’t. And I’m like, ‘We are not where we were years and years ago, where if you took a day off, we’re going to be destitute and homeless. You can take a day off.’ He says, ‘No, no, it’s okay.’”
Why do you think he does that?
“Probably some stupid male chauvinist: ‘I got to work and take care of the family thing.’ I don’t know.”
Or maybe routine is comfort?
“No, because he’s a truck driver. So literally sitting in that truck is the worst thing in the world for him, because it gives him way too much time to think. He’s actually to the point where he wants to stop driving. He’d love to retire. But we are not independently wealthy, so that’s not a thing.” Sandi and her husband are navigating their deeply personal complexities not only within themselves, but in marriage as well, emotionally and, like most, financially.
Bryan’s Support
“I will tell you a cute story. I was invited to Claskanie Elementary’s third-grade classroom. Bryan had just had rotator cuff surgery, so he was in a sling, off work, and came with me. He tries to go to everything with me. He loves it. He loves to go with me to the author things. He’s ridiculously proud. It’s adorable to watch, and very humbling and a little embarrassing.” Sandi giggled and smiled as she talked about her husband.
“So he’s with me, and I talked to the kids and introduced him. This is third grade, so they’re old enough to read and understand the reason behind the book. Well, I happen to have an extra chunk of Home for Jasper, which is the younger version of Jasper Finds a Home that I told the teacher I was going to give to her students. And she’s like, ‘I can buy them.’ I said, ‘No, you can’t. I’m not going to let you.’ And I said, ‘Even at cost, a teacher does not need to be spending their money. No, I’m going to give it to them.’ So, in the end, they (the kids) knew I was going to sign books for them.
“Anyway, I introduced Bryan, and one of the kids had read the introduction of the book and said, ‘Your son died?’ I said, ‘Yes, he did,’ and I looked at the teacher; she was already crying. She kind of nodded her head, like it’s okay.”
Sandi explains how she talks to the kids about being careful and choosing friends wisely. Afterward, when she was signing books, she noticed some kids in the back talking to her husband. One of them ran up to her and said she had already asked Bryan to sign her book.
“I was like, ‘Oh, that’s really sweet.’ And he has terrible handwriting, so I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m sure that was fun.’ And she says, ‘Yeah, well, he’s the dad. He should totally sign it too.’ I was like, ‘That is so nice of you. Thank you so much.’ Then she came up to me, got really close, and said, ‘By the way, I can find the person.’ And I went, ‘What?’ She said, ‘The person who murdered your son. I can find him for you.’
“And I went, ‘Whoa.’ In my head, I’m like, oh my god. And I said, ‘Oh, honey, no, no, no. Nobody murdered my son. It was an accident. And she’s like, ‘Are you sure? Because I can take care of it.’ Wow! I mean, she was dead serious. And I said, ‘Oh, sweetheart, that is so sweet. But no, I promise you, it was just an accident. Nobody did it on purpose.’ She’s like, ‘All right.’”
That story made us both laugh. We imagined what life must be like with such an energetic little girl, with a heart for justice. We both appreciated it for a moment before continuing with the lightness of the space and exactly what kids can do to lighten our hearts.
Breathe every day…
Sandi has experienced tremendous loss in her family, beginning with her nephew in 2013. In 2105 alone, she lost six people: her mother-in-law, both her parents, a great-niece, an aunt, and her husband’s best friend. “Every time we turned around, somebody else was dying. By the time we lost my dad, I just looked at my husband and was like, ‘Jesus, what is happening. I cannot take anymore. It was a constant. So, then when Alex happened, I was like, ‘I’m done.’ It doesn’t even matter who it is now; I can handle it.
“Once you lose your kid, you can just handle it.”
At her son’s memorial, her brother, the father of her nephew who passed away in 2013, was attending. “I got down on my knees because my brother had some health issues at the time and was using a walker.” She said, “How do I do this?”
Her brother looked at Sandi and said, “You breathe every day.
“It’s all you can do is just breathe, and you get out of bed, and you breathe every day.”
To Be Continued…
In Part 2 of Sandi’s story, she shares the events surrounding her son’s accident, remembering Alex, a walk through her memorial tattoos, and how she and her family are embracing life today following their tragedy. Part 2 Coming Soon.
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