An Open Letter to Our Friends and Family

Because this is our 500^th post, we are taking a brief respite from Brogan-mania (there’s one more post coming) to reflect on the last two and half years, to say “thanks,” and to look forward.

As you all know, way back in December 2009, our life changed, in both expected and unexpected ways. Since then, we have been riding the rollercoaster that is life with children. While our particular rollercoaster has had some extra twists and turns to it than the average parents’, we have been blessed with any equally significant amount of love, support, and prayer. We are, and will continue to be, eternally grateful to all of you for how you have helped take care of us throughout this time. We hope to never have a reason to repay you in kind.

While you have all been wonderful and supportive of us, we feel as if we have, by and large, neglected you, our friends and family. Often, we have been late to, or even have failed to, acknowledge significant moments in your lives. While at times our life has been chaotic enough to at least make these acts of omission understandable, if we’re honest, that excuse wasn't always applicable. For this, we offer you our sincerest apologies. If you’ve felt like we haven’t cared about what’s going on with, we hope you know that hasn't been the case.

The unfortunate reality is the physical bubble we’ve had to live in since Ayden was born eventually begot a metaphorical bubble, as well. When that’s added to one of us (Bryan) already not being all that great about keeping in touch from a distance, we end up with a Grand Canyon-sized chasm between our reality and yours. For a long time, we have felt as if we live in a world filled only with doctors, nurses, therapists, some of our local friends, and our parents. With a depressingly few number of exceptions, we haven’t spent any time with the rest of you in going on three years, if not longer. To say that we’ve missed you would be a gross understatement.

We’ve missed graduations, weddings, funerals, trips, football games, parties, holidays, birthdays, family gatherings, and who knows what else. Friends, you haven’t met our kids and we haven’t met yours. Our kids have never played together. Family, you’ve never seen Ayden or Brogan in person. While this may not rise to the level of tragedy, it’s hard to argue against it being quite sad.

Despite our lack of interaction, we have asked quite a bit of all of you. In addition to the love, support, and prayers, we have, in a very real sense, asked you to be understanding of a situation you couldn’t possibly understand. (Nor would we want you to, for the only way to understand it would be to live it, and no one should have to live it.) We let you look at Ayden but told you not to touch. We told you that you had to come to us if you wanted to hang out. For those of you who came from out of town, we made you stay in a hotel. We made you take a shower, put on clean clothes, then come immediately to our house without any stops. We made you bring extra clothes to change into in case we went out. We put limits on the places we could actually go if we did leave the house. We made you tell us if you had even an inclination that you might be sick. We made you wash your hands. Repeatedly. Basically, we told you to bend over backwards to comply with our rules.

We hope it goes without saying that we did all of these things because we truly believed they were what we needed to do to keep Ayden safe, not because we wanted to. These rules were as equally restrictive on us. Our adult interaction, both as a couple and as individuals, has been so artificially limited for so long that it almost seems foreign when it does happen. We no longer feel like ourselves. Regardless, we thank you for the grace you have shown us and the respect you have given to our limitations, even if you, at times, haven’t understood or agreed with them.

We believe it was important to say all of the above. Important, but not our primary purpose for this post. The main message we want to convey is the following: WE ARE FREE!!! As of two Mondays ago – four weeks after Ayden’s Fontan – all the rules we just mentioned are no more. To the fullest extent we can possibly be, we are a normal, run-of-the-mill family. The physical bubble we were confined to has popped. We are ready to start doing the same to the metaphorical one. We can go places. We can do things. We can see people. God willing, it will stay that way.

And we want to see you – our family, local friends, church family, Clemson folks, law school buddies (a group Bryan has especially neglected) – and hang out. And catch up. And meet your kids. And . . . do all the things we used to do before December 2009 happened to all of us. We are ready to get back to a life that has you in it in a way that doesn’t involve a phone call, a text, a blog post, or an email. It may be a while before we are able to come see you. Before, there were two of us and two incomes. Now, there's four of us and only one income. That, and the medical bills we've had to pay over the last 2+ years, have us playing catch up a bit financially.

So, while we may not be able to do a whole lot right away, we hope you will start thinking about where we might fit on your social calendars. We hope to see you Clemson folks at a game this fall. For the rest, we'd love to have visitors. We don't have a bedroom for you anymore, but you're more than welcome to our floor and an air mattress, if that's okay with you.

We hope to see you soon.

With thanks,

Allison and Bryan

P.S.: Given this is post #500, we though we'd throw out some data about the blog. Two things: (1) we didn't have tracking set up until almost five months after we started this, which only serves to bolster that (2) this is just further evidence of the love and support all of you have given us.

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