Show Me The Grief

 I said I would tell the truth.

So here it is.  Tim and I haven’t been arguing about Cory at all.  An argument would imply equal participation by both parties. 

Most times, I am standing above him bent at the waist, hands clenched into fists,  hot tears streaming down my face, vision blurred, my heart a stone in my chest, demanding , “Why don’t you ever say her name?  You never talk about her!”  or  the ever present, “If it were Jake, you would understand what I’m going through.  If it were Jake, you would be talking about him all the time.  If it were Jake, you would be in Fieldstone by now!”  Tim sits during these impassioned tirades, letting me get it out, letting the poison wash over him.  He studies his hands.  When his eyes finally meet mine –which they seldom do in these cases, he hates to see me cry- they look puzzled, hurt, and exhausted.

Quietly, dully, he will say, “I’m sorry.  I don’t know what to say.  Of course, I miss her.  She is always in my thoughts.” 

At that point, I am all out of accusations, still angry, but finding no satisfaction in raging senselessly at my husband who has stood by me during the most terrible time in my life.  I walk away, arms pumping, feet stomping, still fuming, letting the anger and resentment have their way with my limbs; they have already had their way with my mouth.  After these rages, I lay down, my heart beating so fast I fear a cardiac event of some type.  I close my eyes and see her body laid out on the road…crumpled, helpless, and so, so still. 

So now you know another of my dirty little secrets.  I jump all over my husband all too often for real or imagined slights on behalf of my Cory Girl.  Sometimes I wonder if my resentments are pure jealousy because he still has his mini-me, Jacob, while I walk the world without her arm linked in my mine and her voice in my ears or if they are because he is not meeting my level of satisfaction for grieving her.  She so wanted to be Daddy’s little girl.  It is all she ever wanted since preschool when everyone else’s Daddies came to pick them up, and she always had to make do with me or Grandma. 

I often feel that if people love her and miss her as much as I do, their grief should look just like mine.  Ridiculous, of course.  Why would it?  Who loved her just like me?  Who had our exact relationship and connections?  No one else.  Every person who was part of her life carries their own memories, their own conversations, their own little slice of her.   They take them out and look them over in their own safe spaces.  They may shed tears; they may not.  Each person has their own path of grief to walk.  It is a solo chore.  I cannot share my path with anyone else, just as they cannot share theirs with me.  Each path has its own twists and turns, dark places in the woods, and is wide enough for only a single soul to tread. 

Sometimes I wonder if I just can’t stop fighting for her.  I fought for everything for that child.  Now that there is nothing left to ask for, I demand displays of grief instead.   I ask for what I think she deserved.  And I happen to think she deserved so much more than what she got.

I think the you-still-have-yours-but-I-don’t-have-mine phenomenon began the first time we ate out in public after the accident.  I will never forget how surreal it felt to be going out into a crowd of strangers that were talking and laughing and living as if nothing odd had occurred in the world.  It puzzled me because I thought everyone would have felt the planet crack in half when the man said, “I’m sorry, ma’am.  She is gone.”

 Obviously, these people had not been paying attention.  They carried on, stuffing their mouths with food I could not bear to look at.  Some of them smiled into the faces of their children, and I hated them with my very soul.  Why do they get to keep theirs when I had to lose mine?

My heartbeat quickened as the waiter led us to a booth built for three.  Who is Jake going to want to sit by?  I knew the answer as well as I knew my own name, but I held out some crazy futile hope.  He slid in next to Tim without a pause. They ordered food for themselves, and for me.  “You really should eat something, honey.  You don’t want to have to go back to the hospital for another I.V.” Tim said kindly.

I stared at him, my gaze dull and sullen.  I watched as the two boys, who look like mirror images- Jake only missing the facial hair- talked and laughed, playing as they ate.  They looked just like the other people at the tables whose worlds were still intact.  Of course, he could eat, he still had his boy.  I sat alone, my food untouched, clinging to my purse that sat in the tiny spot beside me, where she should have been, where she should be.  This is how it would be from here on out.

 There would be the boys.  And then there would be me.  I would always be alone on my side of the table, desperate for my girl.  The blackness moved in as I pictured this future without her, and swallowed me whole.