Me

Me
just Me

Friday, April 29, 2011

Introductions...

Greetings everyone.  I started this blog, to I don't know show people that Sex Offenders can be reformed and change and grow.  But I don't feel like talking about that right now.  I mean believe me I have things to say, but I guess I should kinda introduce myself first.

My name is Meara, no this is not my real name, those who know me will know me, those who don't don't.  My husband we will call Bramble, and my twin daughters are Sun, and Moon.
I'm 34 yrs old, married to a 41 yr old Sex Offender.  Yes I knew who and what he was before we got married.  And yes I still married him and had children with him.  I'm sure I'll write more about this later.  So lets continue.  Three years ago I had Identical twin girls.  I was terrified!  I could not imagine taking care of 2 babies at once.  Oddly enough I loved it, I completely fell in love with my daughters.  We spent 9 weeks in the NICU when they were born, and I basically lived at the hospital. Eventually we got to go home, and things look good.  My girls had tons of Dr.'s appointments and therapies to go to b/c they were premature, and had brain haemorrhage's Sun had a VP-Shunt installed for hydrocephalis and Moon had a cleft lip and cleft pallet.  Both my little girls had Major Surgeries before they were even 6 months old.  Life was terrifying.  But we made it.  When my girls were 9 months old we moved from the city to a small country town. We tried to follow all the rules for a Sex Offender to move.  And believe me there are tons.  Well we did not get it all done right.  My husband did not sign the paper work for the move at least 5 days before we moved.  He did sign the paperwork the day after we moved but thats to late for people to allow.  The main bad part of this is that failing to register in a timely manner is a felony and he got charged with that and found guilty.  There was confusion about the paperwork that was mailed to us.  We filed it away and did not even open the letter, we were supposed to open it and sign it and send it back. He got 5 more years of probation, which is not bad if you have a decent PO, unfortunately his PO was like a crazy woman.  She stopped by the house every week, weather my husband was home or not.  She she had this tendency to talk over people and be very condescending.  It was very irksome.  At our big Thanksgiving party that year, Bramble purposed to me.  I was in shock, it was amazing.  I had thought that he never wanted to get married again.  But he did and I was ecstatic!  Everything was so right.
Christmas came and we had his two kids from his previous marriage visit with us.  It was great!  I took all the kids to see Santa and get a picture.  The last and only picture with all our kids in it.   The week after Christmas became an ordeal.  My  husband was told that his last grandmother was on her death bed, two states over.   SO we bought a van so we could bring all 4 kids and trekked our way up to see her.  We only stayed 1 day,  b/c we did not want to keep the girls out too much.  We made it home ok, and  the next day Moon got direraha.  It was bad but not so bad.  She had a g-tube b/c of the cleft pallet, so we were giving her peadialight and her food every 2 hours alternating.  Then on Jan. 3 we tried to take her to the hospital, or clinic but the Ice storm was too bad.  We turned around.  Got more peadialight and went home.  We were not even home for an hour before I looked at her and something was wrong, didn't know what it was just wrong. Oddly enough I had asked Bramble if he though she could die just hours earlier.  I should have listened to my gut.  She stopped breathing on the way to the hospital.. I gave her CPR in the back seat.  At the hospital they could not get her heart beating again.  She was dead.  My world shattered.  Life shattered.  All I could do was cling to my dead baby and cry... We held her for prob 2 hours after she passed.  Over 40 people came to see us AT THE HOSPITAL that night.

Her funeral was a week later, and we had over 100 people there as well.  I truly appreciated each and every person who came, and my friends who sang or played the flute for the ceremony.  It was beautiful.  The day after she passed we went to church for the first time in years.  That church was wonderful, the pastor was engaging and well spoken, the people kind and helpful.  But when we told the pastor about my husbands status of being a sex offender, the church suddenly did not really like him being there.  HIS PO tried to tell him he shouldn't go and the church decided he needed a chaperon other than myself.  This was frustrating... it always feels like the moment I try to extend myself I get smacked back and just want to retreat back into my little hole. They never did figure out why she died.  There were no bacterial infections, no viral infections, and no deformities other than the visible  ones.  We will never know why she had to become an angel, and I just have to deal with that.  I miss her terribly.   I watch her twin and think, there should be two.  I pack the diaper bad and think there should be more.  I miss her so much, and its so hard to really be present in life sometimes, and yet I treasure my life and my daughters life so very much more because I know exactly how short it can be.  I tell people that they need to remember that the worst day with your children is still better than the day after a child dies.

The next months were some of the hardest for me.  The company Bramble worked for went under after 25 yrs, a causality of the failing economy.  We lost Moon's SSI income, and we lost our house.  We moved into an apartment, but the next person my husband worked for  never paid us and we lost that as well.  At this point we were living seperiatly  and struggling to survive.  Ten days after my birthday that year I got H1N1 and ended up in the hospital, on a ventilator and in a medically induced coma.
My family fought over who would keep my surviving daughter, since I am the approved supervisor for my husband he could not keep her himself, and only his ex wife could supervise for him to see her.  Rules must be obeyed.  So my family drove her way up north to my husbands ex wife, who has been so wonderful to me ever since I meet her.   And my baby stayed with her for the month or so that I was sick. I've been told I almost died.  My lungs collapsed at least once, my fever was 104 for over a week, and I had such bad repertory distress that I had to be turned on my belly for my lungs to work.  I only got better when they gave me an experimental drug.
When I finally came home, I had to wait another 2 weeks before I was strong enough to take care of her before getting her from his ex's place.  At least she was with her siblings.  She had lost so much I didn't want her to loose more.  Life has not been easy, but so far we have made it. We got married the December after I got sick.. We chose the winter solstice to symbolize the ending of all that bad and the beginning of the light.  Slowly we have worked to get back to good.  We are finally in our own place again, and scraping by.  We promised each other to not blame ourselves about our daughters death, and although I'm still dealing with the grief and depression from all of this, my husband and I have only grown closer.  And we cherish our living daughter Sun, for she is truly like the sun in the sky she just lights up the world around her.
Well this is all I feel like writing today.  Maybe I'll write more later.  But now its time for a small one to get some medicine, she has a cough, and you'll have to forgive me if I'm, just a little over protective.