Clean your windshield

Clean your windshield

Kelly Cervantes

So, I have a bad habit of doing this thing where I fill the gaping holes in my emotional well-being with activities and people. Perhaps if I just stay busy enough then I won’t have to feel things, but it always, ALWAYS catches up to me. It’s as if I’m driving down an interstate going nowhere fast and bugs keep hitting my windshield, until at some point my windshield is so full of bug guts that I can’t see the road anymore and I have to pull over and clean my disgusting windshield. I wish I could say I chose to pull over, but lets be real, when its gets that bad it’s really just about self-preservation.

It's always something

It's always something

Kelly Cervantes

“You may come inside and go downstairs.”

I read the text three times. Go downstairs. But that was where the ultrasounds took place and I wasn’t getting an ultrasound. Had they remodeled? Were the ultrasounds moved? Did they know something about my body that I didn’t? In the inspired words of Gilda Radner’s Roseanne Roseannadanna, “It’s always something. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.” Or, apparently, some weeks or days, it’s alllll the things.

The kids are alright

The kids are alright

Kelly Cervantes

Like any doting parent I worry about my child. I want him to have friends, to be nurtured and challenged. I want him to be kind, confident and curious. I want him to be happy. These desires are more challenging to achieve though when your child is exposed to life’s uglier truths long before you or they are ready. When that thin bubble is burst no amount of parental protection can recreate it, but all hope is not lost - the kids will be alright.

The secret life of Adelaide Grace

The secret life of Adelaide Grace

Kelly Cervantes

Next Tuesday, October 12th, will be two years without Adelaide. Even though I’ve lived this anniversary once before, and keep reminding myself that the anticipation of the day is far worse than the day itself, it still sucks harder than a freshly cleaned Hoover. I will never make a new memory with her and those I have are already beginning to fade or become surreal fairy tale versions of a prior lifetime. So when I learned something new about her this week I felt like I had been given the best gift in the world: new memories a peak into the secret life of Adelaide Grace.

When there's no new normal

When there's no new normal

Kelly Cervantes

7:30 a.m.

Cut the pill with the pill cutter.

Crush the pill with the pill crusher.

Our routine was overwhelmingly foreign to most but familiar to me. Like an ancient map written in a language only I could translate. It was not one I ever would have chosen, but I couldn’t choose to deny it either.

Enough

Enough

Kelly Cervantes

Oh hey, social anxiety, there you are - It’s been a minute since, you know, I haven’t been social for the last 18 months… My anxiety kicked up twelve notches when Adelaide was first diagnosed and I would have to explain her conditions to people. Then, after she died, it was the dreaded “how many children do you have?”. Now, however, the question that has me sweating through my deodorant is “what are you up to these days?”. But this week I had a bit of a breakthrough and it was perhaps the most relief I’ve felt in ages.

Moving In

Moving In

Kelly Cervantes

My friend, Bud AKA Emma’s Dad, saved me this week by sending a blog post I’d asked him to write and holy crap - I don’t think I have ever read the medically complex parenting journey spelled out so clearly or so beautifully. Seriously, this post is poetic. It is my absolute honor to introduce you to Star Dadvocate, Bud, and his journey toward acceptance.

Fill your pitcher

Fill your pitcher

Kelly Cervantes

When I was growing up my mom used to make iced tea in a big plastic pitcher with a spigot. She would fill it up and set it out on the back deck to brew in the sun and, in the heat of the summer, it would be empty by dinner the following evening. This week I realized that we are all an awful lot like that iced tea dispenser and it is really freaking hot outside.

Under his eye

Under his eye

Kelly Cervantes

Never, in my nastiest nightmares, did I ever think I would have to make the decision to let my child die - let alone twice. But I have: Adelaide was my beautiful ladybug that passed away outside of my body days before her fourth birthday and Elvis was my little gummy bear that I carried inside me for 20 weeks. After Elvis died I felt compelled to advocate for women receiving abortions further into their pregnancy because I truly believe they are misunderstood. As of this week, however, I guess we have to advocate for abortion as a human right in itself.

The blank slate shakes

The blank slate shakes

Kelly Cervantes

The last couple of weeks I’ve had a taste of my next new normal. Miguel is in rehearsals for Hamilton, Jackson has been at camp aaand… I’ve been home. This is the normal that I’ve been terrified of, where everyone else’s lives go on and mine stays right where it is. It’s hard to look at the blank slate in front of me and not see the outlines of what has only recently been erased. I know I have this opportunity to make of my time whatever I want - but c’mon how intimidating is that? I can feel the shakes coming on just typing about it. So where does Kelly 4.0 go from here…

First days

First days

Kelly Cervantes

Jackson doesn’t go back to school for three more weeks, but everyone’s back to school photos have me feeling alllll my feelings. You see, Adelaide should be starting kindergarten this fall. There will be a lot of these should’s to come. But this one is hitting me surprisingly hard for so many reasons. Not least of which is the stress I know medically-complex families are enduring as they make life or death decisions about how to protect their children in a world that has politicized masks and vaccinations.

The syringe in my cup

The syringe in my cup

Kelly Cervantes

Once upon a time there was a cup of syringes on our kitchen counter. It contained every size syringe imaginable: Silver dollar 60mL behemoths down to the pencil-thin 1mL munchkins.

After Adelaide died I took her items scattered across the kitchen counter and placed them in her room.

“Let’s leave the syringes in the cup.” Miguel said.

So I did. Like a bouquet of clear, plastic, flower stems they sat in the cup in the corner of the kitchen. An enduring symbol of a life that was but also an unexpected source of grounding comfort years later.

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