10 Years

All day yesterday I was aware of today. But when I woke up this morning, it took me a few hours to make the connection between my odd dream and the date.

In the dream my mom and I were wandering around a food court, that seemed to be outdoors, but then was indoors and more like a restaurant. But then backgrounds are always fluid in my dreams.

I was in line, and had just chosen what I wanted to eat, when suddenly I realized I was in labour.  

I didn't appear to be pregnant, and in real life I am not pregnant. But in the dream I was definitely in early labour.  I turned to tell my mom this, and who do I see a few people behind us in line?  Well my doula partner of course!  My mom said something about calling her over, and the rest of the dream is fuzzy and nonsensical.

I woke up feeling very confused as to why I would be in labour.  
It was only a few hours later, when I was thinking about the significance of the day, that I remembered that I was pregnant on this day, ten years ago.

I was pregnant, it was the holidays and my sister was in Thailand.
She had gone there to have a pause in her life, to take stock.  What she got was a tsunami.  

Our family huddled together, grasping at any piece of media we could, to try and understand what was happening.  Vanessa had managed to email us to let us know she was ok, but was stuck without her passport, which had for some reason been somewhere else at the time of the tsunami.
It was not a good feeling being so far away from her and not really knowing what was happening.
Helplessness.

Over the weeks and months that followed we got a clearer picture of her experience, and how it had affected her.  How it had altered her.  But it wasn't until 18 months later, to the day, that we really began to understand the depth to which this event on the other side of the world had in fact changed all of our lives permanently.
That was the day of her first awake hallucination.  She was taking a walk in a park and then suddenly she was by a river and a sea monster was coming up at her.  It was looking for her, it was hunting her.
She couldn't discern the line between reality and the images she was seeing.

Shortly after this experience she got herself to a clinic and began the process of trying to get help to repair the damage done to her brain when she saw that wave coming at her.
The damage done when she clung to the side of a cliff wondering if she had scrambled up high enough.
The damage done when she saw people in the water disappear, knowing it could have been her.
And the damage done because she survived.
Why her?  She would ask this over and over again in the years that followed.

In the end she didn't find the help she wanted, and chose to end her mental anguish by ending her life.  It took her 7 years and almost 4 months to get to that place.  We know it was a decision fraught with confusion and pain, we know she thought there was no other way.

For those of us left behind, who loved her, the anguish hasn't ended, maybe it never will.
I don't know if there is an end date for grief, can there be?

But I know the day it began.
It began today, ten years ago, on a beach, on Ko Poda, off the coast of Thailand.