How are you?
It's a question everyone keeps asking, often without thinking about it. My standard answer is one Tony came up with: hanging in there. Or you can just say fine, how are you?
What is the real answer, though? Crappy, terrible, worse than I ever imagined, tired all the time, filled to the gills with sorrow, struggling to accomplish normal things. All those are true, too. Yet I go on. I get dressed, I eat, I check my email. I even work a bit now.
As Tony said, "there are moments of lightness and moments of utter despair, and often hovering somewhere in between."
Some times there are "triggers" that knock me on my rear, but. not so many. Those are usually when it takes me by surprise. Since I'm always sad and thinking of Lev, I usually don't get surprised. But the triggers still cut pretty deeply.
- Looking at the wall where we track their growth and realize that we won't make any more marks for Lev.
- Seeing his shoes or his shoe shelf, knowing that they won't be worn.
- Seeing a blank poster board and realizing there won't be any more photos.
- Buying bananas, and lots of other things in the store (aloe juice, grapes, his favorite milk, his favorite brand of cottage cheese, buying Jaals favorite Veggie Italian sausage instead of the keilbasa type that Lev liked.)
- Back to school sales for things we won't be buying.
The things he'll never do again really. drives the absence home. That's worse than all the photos. Photos are a reminder of a happy time, of good things we did together. It's the fact that there will be no more good times that hurts the most.
That and the reliving of the trauma of that morning. Thinking if there was some way that we would have known that his legs being a little sore and his not being that hungry for dinner at the campsite somehow meant he was about to die the next morning. It all seemed so normal. When he awoke having seizures it took us a while to realize he wasn't just having bad dreams, but something really wrong was going on. I know that a half hour of our sleepy stupidity wouldn't have made a difference, but I was the one four inches from him, feeling his head to made sure he didn't have a fever, listening to his shallow breaths and being naively glad he was sleeping it off. I guess it was the beginning of a status seizure, since he never woke up in between the fitful sleep that dawn. I know that if we had been home he would have died in his sleep. I know that the medical examiner said that even if we had called at his first seizure it would have been too late. Even if it all started in the hospital she didn't think they would have been able to save him. Yet they do not know why he died. I don't think they will ever know, yet we wait for the autopsy report. We know his brain was green with something that looked like meningitis. But none of the normal cultures grew out. It was nothing normal - very Lev to leave us in mystery with something whacky.
Yet I am still haunted by the images - my waiting while they checked his blood sugar when we got into the ambulance and hoping he had diabetes followed by their silence at the results, the fluid from his lungs in the ambulance as we neared the hospital and their concern and confusion, the CPR, the defibrilator, the slow realization that what try were doing was not working as I stared and cried looking at my lifeless, naked son on the table.
So, how am I doing? Not well, really.
I wait. I wait for him to come back from French camp, or from Grady's or Zay's or his room, or wherever hr may be. He's been gone a long time, five weeks, yet I am waiting.
I want there to be another parallel world that I can jump in to, where we will all be fine, and this didn't happen. There must be some mistake. How could the most terrible thing of all have happened to us? We are good parents and good people, and we don't deserve this hurt. Yet it did happen, and here we are stuck in this reality. So we go on, day by day, getting dressed, brushing our teeth, feeding the dog.
That is how I. am, just going through the motions of life: eating, sleeping, walking the dog, going back to work slowly, talking to Tony and Jaal, crying alone or with Tony.
I thought I might have been more of a public crier, but this brings me back to my more shy roots I suppose. I need to grieve alone or with someone that feels the grief to the same unthinkable depth. Some days I am on the verge of tears all day and other times I am fine, going through the motions, just being sad.
In the evening I often wonder how we made it through the day, but we did and another day will probably come tomorrow. You can't count on it, as we may wake up dying, but chances are we'll get another go at it tomorrow.
And what can people do to help, not much really. I know they care, I know they feel badly for us. I feel badly for them. I feel badly for Lev's grandparents and uncles, for Zay and Grady and Calen, for Monte, Bryan and Jeana, so very badly for Jaal and Tony it's like an ache. I don't feel badly for myself. I just feel bad. I lost my baby and he's not coming back.
So we need to go on. We go through the motions until the motions become life once again.
As the Buddists believe, suffering is a part of life that we often become disconnected with in this part of the world. Well, I am connected with it now. Maybe that's how I'm doing. I'm connected with the suffering that is a part of life. I am grief and it is me, but we can walk this life together.
So we move on, treat me normally, but without all the small talk. Let's just get down to business and get this living thing done. Appreciate what you have and treat it well. That's all you've got.
And if you had some bright ideas of things to make it better: I've tried or am trying acupuncture, chiropractic, massage, yoga, pilates, walking, journaling, eating well, wine, counseling, group counseling, and reading exciting books on how to cope with the loss of a child.
I'm sure we'll need it all when the current light of our life, Jaal, goes to college in a month, and we are left with an empty house as we wait for the son that will never return to wear his shoes.
