The Phoenix Phase

I was at a social for my husbands department at work this past weekend, and while talking to a colleague of his, I heard the phrase "the Phoenix phase".... and it was like a light went off in my head... and gave me a description for a time in our lives where I truly felt like everything was on fire.

2008 was a rough year for me in many ways... it started on Christmas Eve 2007 when I received a phone call from my Uncle John asking me to help him find my mother because my other uncle, James had been found and was in the hospital in a coma. I was away visiting my husband's family for the holiday in Kansas... so other than calling everywhere I thought my mother might be, I couldn't help much, but together, we foudn her.  When I returned to Texas, I went to visit the hospital, and my uncle was still in a coma and with no hope of coming out of it because he had AIDS.  He had been HIV positive for many years, but it seems that in the recent months he had not taken care of himself as well as he needed and it had transformed into that four-letter word that makes most people cringe.  He stayed in the hospital for the remainder of the year... and all we could do was pray.

My mother had broken the news to her grandmother, my abuelita... she was suffering from colon cancer, but you would never know it.  She remained active... shopping, cooking, and keeping herself busy.  She was always the type of person who appreciated personal contact with others...and instead of sending a check in the mail, or paying her bills over the phone, she wanted to see, face to face, that the person she was giving her money to was the person who was providing her service.  So all of her bills were paid during regular business hours, monday through friday, as she drove to each and every utility company to make sure that they received her funds.  She also prayed everyday as she was a devout catholic woman... it may just be a story, but we feel like she took the same approach when praying about James.  She didn't feel as if her prayers were reaching God as she just sent them up when praying to the Virgin Mary each evening, and in January, she died in her sleep, while holding a photo of James.  She had gone to meet her maker and make her  request for his life to be saved. 

James followed her in death in February.  It was a rough time for the family... James was the second youngest of 9 children.  No one expects one of the youngest to die such a painful and slow death as he had suffered.  It was hard for everyone to cope with.  That summer, my Uncle Rick who was living in my abuelita's house before she passed moved in with my parents as his health was also failing... he too had AIDS.   After visiting a doctor in Dallas they found that he too, had cancer as well.  HE spent many weeks in the hospital with treatments, and my mom, Aunt Irene (from Chicago) and myself would visit him quite frequently to keep his spirits up.  He was such a friendly guy... and made friends even while in the hospital with all of the staff and a couple of the other patients on his floor.  Everytime they would send him home, he would stay for a week or two, and then some other complication would drive him back to the hospital, but he was fighting. 

In October, my grandfather, and the father of 9 children, died as well.  It was a long time coming, and he didn't suffer long, but he had suffered from cirrohsis of the liver and emphasema for many years.  He passed and put all of the suffering to rest.  We made it through the remainder of the holidays before we also lost Uncle Rick.  My mother jokingly says that God has to take our family in large groups because there are so many of us... if he took his time and took us one at a time and waited for us to finish grieving for each, we would just about live forever!

It was a tough year for all of us to get through, but as a family, we made it... and 2009 started brand new for us all.  During this rough time... Dallas and I had been trying to start our own family, and had been working at it actively for about 2 and a half years.  I was having trouble ovulating which seemed to be a common enough problem and one with some very simple fixes, but to not be able to do naturally what it seems that we as women were born to do was tough to cope with mentally.  We discussed further treatments with the doctor's and tried a couple of times with no sucess... and finally on March 11, 2009, I had a positive pregnancy test!  I was so excited... life was turning around... what I wanted the most was finally happening.  Later that month,  Dallas and I made the decision for him to accept a teaching position in Pennsylvania which meant that we would have to move in the summer.  Through the excitement of being pregnant and the nervousness of everyday and hoping that nothing would go wrong, we were packing up our lives to start brand new in a new place with new people. 

I was worried the most about what this place not only held for me and my husband, but what was in store for this baby that was going to be born to brand new parents and with no family or friends for support.  We were blessed that Dallas had a great group of colleagues who took personal interest in filling that void for family and friends for us.  As hard as it is to find a substitute for the family and friends that you have known for a long time, they were such a blessing during such a painful time. 

We tousled over many names for the baby for a while... and nothing seemed quite right.  Dallas recommended that we just name her after him... he liked the fact that he was named after a city and wanted the same for her.  I found the name Phoenix... not only did it meet the criteria for being the name of a city... but it was also a mythical creature that was a symbol of strength and rebirth.  A Phoenix is a very colorful bird that has a very long life cycle... and at the end of that cycle, it builds a nest of twigs and ignites it on fire and they both burn to ashes, and from those ashes arises a new Phoenix... a new life to start again. 

Could there have been a more perfect name to give our daughter.  After all of the turmoil in our lives the previous years... the beginning of our new life in a new place with new people... we were starting our "Phoenix Phase".  We were rising from the ashes and becoming something new... a family... that before, never existed!