{"id":11469,"date":"2022-11-23T08:10:18","date_gmt":"2022-11-23T13:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=11469"},"modified":"2022-12-01T07:58:27","modified_gmt":"2022-12-01T12:58:27","slug":"broken-hallelujah-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=11469","title":{"rendered":"“Broken hallelujah,” Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part 2 of my recounting of my sister Melanie Kay Brown Gentry<\/span><\/a>‘s memorial service at the Roanoke (Virginia) Church of Christ on November 12, 2022. Part 1 can be found here.<\/a><\/p>\n

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“I love the Progressive Insurance commercials where Dr. Rick advises young homeowners on how \u2018not to become like their parents.\u2019 I shouldn\u2019t, because I am<\/em> the parent, but I do.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is one in particular<\/a>: a young homeowner, who looks a lot like me, proudly holds up a \u2018website\u2019 he\u2019s printed from his computer. Dr. Rick coolly replies, \u2018We don\u2019t need to print the internet.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, thank goodness my sister A. does! Because if she hadn\u2019t, then we might not have ever been able to recover Melanie\u2019s blog and several entries she posted from 2015 to 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe called her blog, domesticityblissity<\/a>. My sister had both a sense of humor and irony.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarting out, and I don\u2019t mean anything derogatory by using this term, hers was a ‘mom blog’. Melanie wrote about the ups and downs of raising her children, who were teenagers by then, chronicled some of their funny and poignant stories, and reflected on how she and J. were adapting to their evolving roles as parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut in 2018, her blog took a hard turn.<\/p>\n

“I will read one post post in its entirety because it marks that point. Until then, she had kept mostly quiet about her battle with von Hippel-Lindau Disease<\/a>, but here she makes clear here in no uncertain terms just how difficult the struggle had become and details the many areas of her life that had taken a turn for the worse.<\/p>\n

“From March 30, 2018, ‘Coming out of the chronically ill closet’<\/a>:<\/p>\n

After barely beginning to experiment with sharing a little about my life through this format in 2015, everything came to a screeching halt for me. Last I checked, nearly three years ago, I was describing myself as a mother of three teenagers and sharing some of their more riveting high school antics. Fast forward to present day, and life looks very different for me. Now two are juniors in college 1300 miles away from home, and the youngest is a freshman at a much closer, in-state university. Everything is what one might expect with them in those stages of life, but for me, not so much.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe very summer after my two oldest, twins, graduated from high school and began their college adventures, I simply and without much notice, fell apart. One might expect a mom to grieve and have lifestyle changes when the kids fly the coop, but this was more than that. While I will not go into a list of symptoms at this time, I will say that the following years turned into a progressively downhill rat race of hospital stays, tests, doctor visits, tears, disappointments, falls, broken bones, prayers, physical therapy, more bruises, and trying things I would have never dreamt of trying, all in hopes of feeling better and reclaiming my normal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cBecause my family has relocated four times since my marriage in 1994, it is very easy to \u201csee\u201d the different stages of life as they\u2019ve progressed and divide life into boxes:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n