Cindi's Personal Loss History Graph

My grandparents have a timeshare in Aruba, and when I was a baby the whole family would go down for a week every January for vacation. I have a very vague memory of being outside, getting a nosebleed, and running back to the house, where there were tall wicker stools at the breakfast bar with pink vinyl cushions.

My dad had Rodney before he even had me. He was a black lab mix that was so happy and brought me a lot of joy growing up. He would escape every trash day, and you could find him by following the trail of knocked down garbage cans in the neighborhood. And he and I played together all the time. One day when I was at my mom's house, she received a call and began tearing up. She hung up, crouched down to my level, and told me that Rodney had died. She drove me to a friend's house down the street from my dad's house, and I found out that he had escaped from the house and fallen into a neighbor's pool and drowned. I was devastated and remember crying in my friend's room for a while before she was able to distract me with toys and games. This was also the first time I found out my dad could cry. I never saw him do it, I just heard someone mention that he cried when he found out.

In 5th grade, I joined the track team because my parents encouraged me to join a sports team at school and that was the only team that I did not need to try out for. I joined too late to sign up for any of the events in the first meet, but I was still expected to show up to the meet. Two other girls and I were on the other side of the field when our coach loaded up the bus to go back to school, and they left without us. Once we realized what happened, I immediately started panicking. We were in another city, that I knew had a reputation for not being the safest, and we had no adults with us. I truly thought I might never see my family again. One of the girls with us used to live in the area, and her father worked at the fire station in the area. We walked for what felt like hours and finally arrived at the station, but he was off-duty. The other men working reached out to her father, got us candy from the vending machine, and gave us a phone book so we could call the school. We were eventually picked up and brought back safely, but it was such a horrifying experience at the time.

My mom and I moved into her friend's duplex in 1998. I loved living in that duplex so this was mostly a positive experience, but I was sad to leave behind the first house I lived in with my mom. Her neighbors were very friendly, and I loved blowing dandelions around the backyard and climbing on the boulder in the front yard.

My dad and my stepmom, Patti, married when I was 5. They then had my two half-sisters, Trisha and Deanna, who are 7 and 9 years younger than me. Patti and I have always had a complicated relationship, and she was a problematic person for much of my sister's childhoods, but I still loved her and the relationship we had growing up. She was absolutely a second mother figure in my life. One Sunday night I came downstairs into the kitchen to grab some water before bed, and I heard my dad and Patti arguing in the living room. My dad then called me in and said bluntly "how would you like to have three families? Patti is divorcing me." After I went back upstairs to process (ie call my mom and cry into the phone), I heard my dad punch holes in the wall. A while later, they both came into my room individually to apologize and tell me they loved me. I had a rough time paying attention to anything at school that week.

My mom got Jasmine as a puppy and she was such a sweetheart from day one. She loved cuddling and was so laid back, and yet at the same time could get into so much trouble. She would sneak into the recycling and take out cat food cans and peanut butter jars, and then she would 'hide' by sticking her head in between the couch cushions when we caught her. She loved chasing ducks and geese to the point where she would go running off down the street if she saw one, and could spend hours swimming after them in the local pond. When she was 9, my mom brought her into the vet for a problem with her leg, and when I called her about it she said she was completely fine. The next day, my mom came by my dad's house to tell me that actually, the vet had discovered that Jasmine had late stages of cancer all throughout her body, and my mom had to make the difficult decision to have her put down right then and there. I was furious at my mother for lying to me over the phone, and for not giving me a chance to say goodbye to someone I loved so much. I told her to leave, and it took me several days before I could speak to her again. Years later, I completely understand why my mother made the choices she did, and that she had no control over me not having a special last moment with Jasmine. I have since talked to her about that experience and apologized for the way I acted, and in her usual gracious fashion my mother told me to never apologize for grieving.

My Nana was an amazing woman. Up until I was 18, she was the matriarch of the Donadios, and she was a spitfire. I have so many memories of playing poker with her, learning Italian from her (all of which I have since forgotten) and eating her pizza and pizzelles in her kitchen. She would always stand in the window waiting for us to come visit her, and always had activities for us kiddos to do. She was diagnosed with lung cancer the summer before my senior year, and passed away the following spring. One of the last times we visited her, she held my hands and cried because she knew she would not be able to see me graduate high school. I still have one of her Italian horn necklace charms that I wore everyday until the chain broke. Once I find a suitable replacement, it will once again be in my regular jewelry rotation.

My mom met her wife, Patty, when I was a freshman in high school. They fell in love quickly and we moved in with Patty and her daughter, Molly, soon after. Molly and I are the same age, and to this day she is my closest friend because of our time as step sisters living together. Right before Christmas in my senior year, my mom told me that she and Patty would be getting divorced because although they loved each other, Patty was just struggling too much with their relationship and didn't want to continue. She gave my mom two months to move out, and we moved three days before my 18th birthday. I was so mad at Patty for breaking up our family, and was so sad to not be living with Molly anymore. It was also really hard to watch my mom go through the heartbreak that she went through.

In the spring of my senior year of college, my youngest sister had major surgery on both of her legs to correct birth defects that caused her bones to tilt inward. She was in recovery for months, and was absolutely miserable. She was staying in a hospital bed on the first floor of my dad's house, since his house was bigger than my stepmom, Patti's. Apparently one day at a hospital check-up, Patti called security on my dad because she thought he was too tired to drive Deanna back home and didn't trust him. Security let my dad leave, and so Patti instead called everyone in my dad's neighborhood to show up at his house and prevent him from going inside the house with Deanna, as she was convinced he was not going to let Patti come visit her. The police ended up being called, and during all of this I was getting phone calls from Patti telling me to come home from college to help her, from my dad telling me to stay where I was, and from my sister Trisha telling me she was scared at home and did not know what to do. Luckily nothing ended up happening from this, but I lost so much trust in Patti after this, and just felt so much guilt for not being home more to help my dad take care of Deanna while she recovered. He spent countless nights sleeping in his car in the hospital parking lot when visiting hours ended, just so he could be nearby in the morning since it was an hour plus drive between the hospital and home. And he had more sleepless nights on the couch in the room next to Deanna so he could give her pain medication when she woke up crying in the middle of the night.

During my senior year, my dad got a golden retriever puppy and we named her Doobie. Six months later, we got her brother Harley from the same breeders. They were the absolute loves of our lives. If we went on a family vacation, we found a way to take them with us. They were the reason I came home to visit so much. Doobie had a way of solving all of your problems by resting her head on your lap, and Harley would press himself so hard into your body it was like he was trying to merge his soul with you. They both got sick and died within months of each other when they were around 11. It has been over a year since they've passed and I still cry when I remember that they won't be at my dad's house the next time I go to visit