Catching the Falling Pieces…
On the ipod “Slide” by: James Bay
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/slide/1354016490?i=1354017366
I was about 9 years old standing in the aisle of the local Safeway store by myself while my mom was shopping...suddenly
the room got fuzzy, my heart was pounding in my chest and my thoughts were echoing in my head. I stood there wondering what the hell was happening to me. Stuck. Trapped. Alone yet surrounded. Lost.
This is the story of when the Panic began...
Third grade was a defining moment for me... A family friend and classmate of mine lost his father in a horrific car accident. It pretty much sent me reeling in a year that was already a struggle. The panic took over most of my life. My parents struggled with how to help me. The school struggled as well...finally making concessions for me to call home twice a day every day so that I had reassurance that all was well. At 9 the reality of watching a friend lose a parent so young set off a domino effect of anxiety that would take years to get a grasp on.
After alot of therapy, I would come to realize that what I was experiencing in the store that day was my first panic attack. Unfortunately, for me, there isn’t really a trigger or sign when one will come. It’s not like a concrete worry that takes over but a mix of a million little worries and fears stacking on top of each other until the bottom falls out like a falling tower of jenga pieces. There really isn’t a way to fix it either... it’s more about just holding on and surviving it.
This has been a trying week at our school... and the bottom of my jenga stack is barely holding together... whether you are a friend or co-worker, a student, a parent, a woman, a man, even just a regular human who didn’t even have a real connection to her...This story will test your stack of jenga pieces.
A second grade teacher at Levi’s school, Dominique Bourgeois, passed away on Tuesday. Just a week after she gave birth to her first child, a son named Liam. She was 28... 28 years old...still a baby herself. She was previous diagnosed a year and a half ago with an aggressive form of breast cancer but after treatment was cancer free by last May. Over the summer, she got pregnant and it has seemed that her pregnancy was rolling along pretty uneventful. She was a bright light at our school. She had true grit...and the ability to teach EVERY child with patience and understanding. Almost two weeks ago she wasn’t feeling well and having trouble breathing. When they did a ct scan they found that the cancer had returned and was now in her lungs. They performed an emergency c-section and delivered a perfectly healthy baby boy but found that the cancer was ravaging her whole body. She was an amazing fighter protecting her unborn baby long enough to be safely delivered while fighting an undetected recurrence of super aggressive metastatic triple negative breast cancer. The pain that she must have been enduring is devastating to imagine. As a community we are heartbroken. We are angry at this disease for robbing Liam of an amazing mom and robbing her of the chance to raise a child that she wanted so badly. We are incredibly sad for her family and for her students and I think for the most part we are all pretty freaking scared at the idea that life is so fragile.
So here we sit at one of those defining moments that is definitely changing life not just for those of us who truly know the weight of losing Dominique but for a whole new generation of little worriers who are grappling with the unfairness of this huge loss.
My hope is that we are able to be hyper vigilant and watch for falling jenga pieces... they are most definitely stacking up in this super tight-knit community....
And to Mrs. B...Thank you...thank you for teaching all of us... in life and in death so many more lessons than you ever knew that you could. We will continue to hold your precious Liam, your husband Nick and the rest of your friends and family so close to our hearts.
An account has been set up to support Baby Liam’s education. I will post it here in case you want to donate.
https://paypal.me/pools/c/8ddvOnZLoe
“Let him sleep for when he wakes, he will move mountains”
Hugging everyone a little bit tighter tonight...
Love, Me
Dominique Bourgeois 1990-2019
and Liam the mountain mover
