#BringDianaJamesHome | Our Family Story

Penguino

Posted on November 17, 2023November 17, 2023 by Miesha

This is Penguino. He’s become an important member of the Oxley family residence over these last few months. This soft, adorable little penguin is magically able to bring us close when the distance is obvious and inescapable. I love this little guy.

When the girls and I were in Portugal, we spent our days mostly playing pretend that we lived there more than the usual touristy types of things. I was making dinner most nights and helping to keep everyone’s clothes clean and folded which meant that errands needed ran and chores needed done. I was hoping to bring some feel of normalcy, familiar structure and familiar food to Megan and Matt while they were spending their days taking care of their mom at the hospital.

There were a few times though that we would take a special outing to explore a bit. In our last days with Matt before our flight home we went to an aquarium in Porto. Honestly the thing I remember most about the aquarium is when I very publicly slammed my face into one of those peekaboo wall windows and smashed my nose with full force. I thought it was concave, I was wrong. I was in so much pain but also a fit of laughter. Aside from that… the aquarium is where we got Penguino.

Every Day, Being with Mom, In The Hospital

Posted on November 11, 2023 by Megan

Every day we went to the hospital, only missing a handful of days over 6 months. It was hard in the beginning….the not knowing if she would survive day to day. Everyday was met with anxiety of even arriving at the hospital as they do not actually call you if your loved one passes during the night, they wait for you to come to the hospital the next day or call you in the morning.

Once inside the ICU, every beep, every alarm was an imminent threat…a threat that her life continued to hang in the balance…..A threat that we might still lose her. Watching the ventilator breathe for her, watching the ICP monitor fluctuate with the pressure in her skull, watching her blood pressure rise and drop without warning….all were constant reminders of how precious and fragile life is.

Lost

Posted on October 30, 2023October 30, 2023 by Megan

Have you ever had a life altering event threaten the very existence of who you know yourself to be…who others know you to be?

I think about this question often. Not just in the sense of me wondering about the changed person my mom will become but also in the ways my brother and I will be forever changed….and those who are closest will be forced to change as well.

I have often felt lost in this dumpster fire…wondering who I am and who I am becoming, if I will like myself after this (because I’ll be honest, I was just starting to dig that chick at 43 years old!), if others would still love me…if there would still be enough good in me to love The emotions we’ve experienced in the last 6 months have completely buried me. We are in survival mode and I have no doubt that will wreak havoc on our bodies for years to come because it’s unhealthy to have this much cortisol coursing through your veins, especially for long periods of time.

The only place to go is towards tomorrow

Posted on October 29, 2023October 30, 2023 by Miesha

In the days before our flight, we talked a lot about what it was going to be like. We did a lot of pretend play where we set up seats in the family room or sat inside boxes and “flew” around the world in our minds. We walked the block and talked about how busy airports are and how important it is to stay together and calm as much as possible. We wondered about what it would be like to see clouds out the window and we spun our toy globe hundreds of times thinking about the distance of things.

Yeah… I mean, if I went back in time and did it all again, I would still do all those things but despite my best attempts to prepare myself and two toddlers for what was up ahead, we were still a grand hot mess at several parts of this international flight. All in all, I have to give it up to these little Oxley ladies because they did amazingly all things considered. They were so well behaved in the airports and with the help of stranger angels along the way… we managed.

Big Conversation with Little People

Posted on October 22, 2023October 22, 2023 by Miesha

When big things happen in life, we always have a choice to numb or acknowledge. When we go through a bad breakup, face conflict, lose a job, lose a person or hit rock bottom… we have the opportunity to look carefully at the state of things and live within it or to find the closest comfort and leave it to live around us but not truly within us. I actually stopped blogging and writing publically when my life blew up after a bad break up about 10 years ago. It felt too vulnerable at that time. I deleted my facebook, I opted NOT to go to my high school 10 year reunion and I dug a little hole for myself to hide away in for a while, allowing people in only as they felt safe to me. My dad passed the following year and the sudden nature of his death brought emotions that simply felt way too real to deal with properly. These two experiences (probably them being quite close in time didn’t help) gave way to my relationship with anxiety. She’s a part of me, anxiety, I guess always was. With these new experiences layered on top however, she looked different and it took me a while to process things and grow into the person I am now.

Emergency passports and mothering amongst the struggle

Posted on October 21, 2023October 21, 2023 by Miesha

Grandma got sick about a month before the end of the school year. I am a speech language pathologist in the schools and suddenly, the job I’ve always loved with a passion felt small. I kept feeling this pressure inside of me and the urge to cry. Every bit of me wanted to be with grandma and Matt and I wanted my girls to have their daddy back.

Matt and I were confident in the decision for us to join him and Megan for the summer. Surely this wouldn’t endure past another 6 weeks. We figured that we would all end up flying home together. Plenty of others thought we were crazy.

Mother’s Day (miesha)

Posted on October 19, 2023October 20, 2023 by Miesha

Mya and Morgan's Mother's Day present to Grandma. A bouquet of pictures with colorful fuzzy dots.

I haven’t had that many mother’s days as a mom yet. This last May marked my third. In so many ways, most ways probably, I am still figuring out what it means to be a mom at all. It’s strange the images and thoughts that perseverate within grief and crisis. It’s been nearly 6 months now since the Mother’s day that would change everything and the images that have consistently come back to me throughout all of this are of Diana as a tiny baby in her mother’s arms and Matt as a little boy in hers.

For those of you that don’t know me directly my name is Miesha and Matt is my amazing husband. This is his story as much or more than it is mine and I write my part of it as a way to move heartbreak to written word, to get the story out of my body and on to paper and to document the story my little family has lived; its lessons marked upon us indelibly.