I've been mulling it over for the past week now.
When you have a truly worst day, I'm not sure you can ever have a best day.
I can't imagine a day so good that you dream of it repeatedly, that you wake up sweating,with the smells and colors of the day fresh in your mind as if you are reliving it.
I think only trauma can do that. When you have such a day, it overpowers all others, making even your best day a drop in the bucket of emotions.
Trauma is not forgotten. Even my most minor bad childhood memories are recalled vividly, unlike a good day. Like the day I stepped in poop in my bunny costume with footies in first grade. It is my only first grade memory, but I clearly remember the incident and trying to clean it in the classroom bathroom sink.
If the memory of poop on my footie at age six sticks with me that strongly, I do not imagine that morning with Lev ever to fade. Maybe I don't want it to. If that morning fades, maybe the afternoon before when we were laughing, listening to French tapes in the front seat of the car, will fade too.
If I lose the intense vividness of Lev grabbing my thumb in seizure in the tent, maybe I will lose the memory of grabbing a lock of his soft, lovely hair and having it bounce back.
If I lose the freshness of the memory of the doctors doing CPR, his belly jiggling, will I lose that part of myself that left that day?
I don't want to lose the bad memories, as they are my last hours with Lev, but their intensity has left my life with an experience that will be unmatched.
For the sudden, traumatic death of your child there is no cure, there is no good day, no happy memory that could come close to matching it. The rest of life rests in its shadow.
I realize I can add joy to our lives, I just can't reduce the sadness.
Instead of just missing him, I try to imagine him sending us love and hope and best wishes. I imagine him routing for our future. I have talked to Lev much more in this last month than in the past. I think I am trying to bring him in my heart in a positive way instead of just the yearning.
Rebecca
