gratitude/details/life on loan

i'm exhausted, so you won't see much effort invested into this blog post, but i am inundated with things i need to get off my chest so here goes.

it pisses me off when i hear people complaining about their lives. don't they realize it could be so much worse? and i only realize that because my life IS so much worse than theirs. I would never say that to their face though. I only think it, which doesn't make my recovery any better. i mean really. so you have sinus problems, you are busy planning your daughters wedding, you are planning your own wedding, you have a crappy job, you are stressed, you have relationship problems, WHATEVER. Just shut up. people are so self involved. its all about them and it so about them they can't even see that it could get so much worse. i'm done with pity parties. ironically, i am feeling this at the same time matthew perry made a  contest out of whose grief is worse on his new show, Go On. I couldn't help but relate ;)

second, details. it has been so long (yeah, right) since his death that i've forgotten that some people still don't know basic details of his death. for a long while, the family wasn't ready to talk about them, so we just said car accident. thank you all for respecting us enough and loving us enough to simply take that answer as is. for the rest of you, go ahead and gossip all you want. we know the honest details of his death. here they are: evan died of brain trauma. he was brain dead upon arrival at the hospital (which was literally just around the corner). that happened at around 10:30 i believe. how did he get such injuries? evan was riding a car. no, he wasn't in it. he was riding it. he wasn't on top, but was leaning against the windshield. he was on the car for far too long and the car was going far too fast (even 1 mph would have been too fast for having a human on it). and yes, he was completely sober. not high. not drunk. nothing but recklessness, nothing but evan. evan made to jump off the car (slide is a better word) when he saw police cars off the side of the road. he knew he'd get yelled at. as he was getting off, the car was pulling over. we think the laws of physics apply here. for every action there is a reaction or something like that ;) evan was sliding off as the car was pulling over and it threw him off the car. his big heavy art bag he had slung over his shoulder didn't help even out the weight either. his head smacked down on the concrete, perfectly hitting the brain stem in the moment of impact. not the side, not the front, just that perfect sweet spot in the back. at the base of your neck, the stem of the brain. responsible for every well being trait in your body. it took about three minutes for him to become throughly brain dead. there was no hope, but there was no pain either. it was quick and painless. the way everyone hopes a loved one dies, right? hah. thats just sordid. by the time the paramedics arrived, they knew there was no hope as well as the neurosurgeons at the hospital. they didn't even attempt emergency surgery to losen the skull (which had multiple fractures, by the way). by the time we got to the hospital, they had already had him on life support. every one knew. i knew. dad knew. mom was in denial. later, in the following weeks and months, we would be in denial as well that he was truly gone. i still am sometimes. the only consoling thought at the fricking hospital was that i could have a few days to say goodbye, that they could sustain him as long we as needed. again, there were no injuries anywhere else on his body (i mean other than the road rash). he lungs were fine, his heart was fine, etc. his injuries were solely head trauma. i'll never forget how he looked in that hospital bed. he still had his hair and his perfect lips and his adorable poteet nose. but his gorgeous eyes? gone, buried under the mass of the brain pushing through his skull. (sorry if that was too much, but this is for me, not you). that was so scaring, what i wouldn't give to look in his gorgeous almond shaped green eyes again (sometimes they were blue, sometimes they were even grey). and what i wouldn't give to say goodbye to him alive, not brain dead. i got to do that with my grandpa. i got to do that all weekend with him. but he died painfully, from pancreatic cancer. why can't my loved ones die with both closure and no pain? why one or the other? anyways, i digress. we thought they could keep him on life support until at least my sister came in on the next flight from california. we were wrong. we had 5 hours with him before the nurse said we should come in and say goodbye. he was already braindead, though, we knew he wasn't there. but know not even life support could sustain him he was that bad. we called in the grandparents to say goodbye. i'll never forget that. i think my grandpa (who had already had developed the cancer but didn't know it yet) lost his spirit that morning he saw his grandson on his deathbed. i've never seen him so broken. he was a fighter his whole life. i've never seen my grandmothers cry like that either. they are both very strong and confident and independent women. both were broken as well. after that, we waited around until they did the ink blot test, to scan for any remaining brain activity. thats why his date of death is officially may 4, because they did the test at 9 am. he was technically dead at 10:30 pm on may 3, 2012. the only consolation from this whole thing was that they were able to donate ALL of his organs. that is so rare. his heart, my own brothers heart, went to a 14 year old boy. if thats not touching i don't know what is.

i could talk for days about those days in the hospital (yes, days). i will never forget those days for as long as i live. i will never forget the smell either. how towards the end the room stunk of death. the blood seeping was too much for me to handle, it was all i could do not to vomit in the room. i will never forget how sallow he looked either. but then when they harvested his organs, kept his vitals up for a couple days for prep for donation, he looked so rosy and full of life. but he was dead. isn't that the biggest case of irony you've ever heard of? how can someone whose dead look so full of life? ugh, its twisted. just twisted.

okay, moving on. lets talk about evans life on loan. for a while now i have felt like evans life was literally on loan from God. most people don't know he was born with a hole in his lungs. i mean, from the very first day of his life he was in the intensive care unit. in the very last days of his life he was in the intensive care unit. from his early days to his last days, evan had too many close calls with life versus death. i had originally wrote them down, but my list is gone. i can mainly think of his using years in his teenage hood. while it was never shooting up, he did alter his state and do stupid stuff. he was reckless. he was in one very serious car crash when he was 17, that catapulted him into rehab. now, looking back, i realize now (as he had often stated in the last year or two) that he wasn't an addict.  or maybe he was at that point in time. but i think really he was just an immature teenager who was making consistently wrong choices with the wrong people, and was in such a lifestyle he couldn't pull himself out. now, as a man, he made his choices, much different than the choices he made as a teenager. he did enjoy his alcohol, but what 21 year old wouldn't? ;) okay, so aside from his reckless teenage years, then came the crazy ass driving. again, reckless. he thought he was invincible, just like my dad. he was a horrible driver. there was a series of 4-5 accidents in 2 and a half years i think? he was lucky to come alive out of all them. again, why did he not die then? God gave us more time with him. God let us have just a little more time with our brother, with our son, with our friend. But God knew it was only a matter of time. We didn't. We were shocked when the accident happened. God wasn't. God did give us quality time together in his last couple months of life, although we didn't see it until after the fact. Hindsight is 20/20, right? I don't know if it was God's choice or not, but God was definitely trying to "soften the blow". Not that that really helped. Anyways, Evan should have died many times over. Evans life was on loan. God let us lease him for 21 years before calling him back Home.

This leads me into another topic- Premonition. I think this post is too long and i am too tired to go into it now. Will save for another entry. Until then, remember, don't take life for granted and count your blessings.