Why Me? AKA Why Not You?

Here's the thing about being around a parent who has lost a child.  They are being swept along by the current of their emotions. They are just riding the roller coaster and trying to make it through.  They move in and out of the stages of grief over and over again- one of them being anger.  Plan on seeing them be angry.  And if their child's death was traumatic, plan on seeing some of that anger be completely irrational.  Remember those closest to them will catch the brunt of it just by accessibility.

I don't always understand why I'm angry.  I just am.

I don't mean to hurt people's feelings along the way.  But I do.

I realized a long time ago that the question I was asking through my anger was "Why me?  Why her?"  Or even just the abbreviated, "Why?"  I did all the research, read all the grief self-help books, and tried to change that question from "Why?"  to "What? "

"What can I do now?  What will help me move forward?"  It was a nice try, but I failed miserably at sustaining this thought model.  Cory's face- her big green eyes- just swallowed that logic up.  Bloop.

I rail in private and in public- mainly on this blog- about other parents who haven't lost their children all the time, never realizing that I was asking the second question, "Why Not You?"

It's not a mean question.  It's just an honest question.  And I have to believe on behalf of myself and any other parents out there who've lost their children that if you were in our shoes, you'd be asking it, too.  It is human nature.

Maybe I take it to the next level because I voice it so publicly.  I put it out there for the world to see, as unflattering as it may be.  I throw in some profanity along the way for emphasis.

That's just who I've grown to be.  I don't believe in wearing the mask.  I don't believe in under-reporting the symptoms.  I don't believe in not voicing your questions.

If you don't ask them, how will you ever get answers?

And maybe, the answer will eventually be that there is no answer.  Maybe someday, I'll get tired of asking.  I sure hope so.  I don't want to be this bitter forever.

In the meantime, I just have to be angry.  I have to trust the process.  I hope my friends and loved ones will continue to be as patient with me as they've been so far.  Let me be angry.  Accept it for what it is.  Don't take it personally.  Sit with me and let me rail.  And remember, I still love you all the same...and your children, too.

"I Got You"

Jacob has always been a quiet boy.  He is the quintessential "still water that runs deep".  He may be thinking many things behind those beautiful eyes, but if he doesn't trust you implicitly, you will never know.  Since Cory's death, he has retreated from others even more, preferring to communicate online with all his gaming buddies who live across the country.  This may be typical teenage boy in this new electronic age, but the fact that he never has friends over anymore...not as typical.

He is happiest in his comfy gaming chair with his light up keyboard, chatting up his cyber-friends through his headphones/mic combo.  Every few weeks, he'll try to shake me down for money to add to his gaming empire.  I am usually able to resist, as I see that contributing to his gaming gear will only reinforce his isolation.  Once and awhile, I cave, because if you can't spoil your last living child, why exactly are you still here?

So, once and awhile, I contribute to his coping skill- that is, what he's doing after all.  All of this online gaming is an escape from the constant, gnawing grief of losing his big sister, his best friend.  And I recognize, that while I'd love to see him be more social, there are far more unhealthy coping skills he could be choosing.

I remember, too, that some of his reluctance to socialize in person is simply his temperament, and I suspect, too, he may have a touch of that social anxiety I've had forever.  The loss of Cory has probably deepened it, as trauma tends to do.

But the Jacob I know?  The Jacob he shows me, his most trusted confidante?

He is absolutely amazing.  He is wildly intelligent, cautious, kind, funny, silly, and gallant.

Gallant?  Yes, gallant.

He doesn't always remember to hold doors for girls, but I'm steadily reminding him.  He has unwavering opinions on how women should be treated- what is acceptable and what is not.  I have no doubt that he will be a good and kind man, and if I have a thing in the world to do with it, he will be an amazing husband.

The gallant comes in like this:

The other night he was doing the familiar shake-Mom-down-for-gaming-funds.  I was declining him with no problem.  He sensed this, and suddenly upped his game.  We were walking through the living room, and he took me by the elbow, "Let's dance."

I giggled into his eyes.  "Are you trying to woo me, Jacob Mansfield?"

"Maybe."  he said back with the tiniest of smiles, but his eyes sparkling.

My heart just beamed, as I imagined him bantering with girls and women in this way someday- this is his flirting style.

I've been trying to teach him to waltz here and there, and every time we get back to it, I think that someday I will be dancing with him at his wedding, and it makes me quite glad to be alive.  It makes all the horror of living without his sister completely worth it.

So here we were, dancing clumsily, and without music across our living room floor.  He tried to dip me, and I panicked at the last moment, jumping out of his embrace.  He cracked up at this.  "Mom!  You never let me dip you!"

"I was afraid you would drop me!"  I laughed back.

"Mom!  I would never drop you!"  he responded.  "I'm strong.  I got you."

I got you.

I got you, girl.

I think he does.  I think the next time we dance, I'll risk my spine to make him feel trustworthy.  And every time, we goof around like this, I realize the reason I have chosen to stay alive in a world without Cory is standing right in front of me, his still small hand on my waist, learning how to guide a girl around the floor.

And he's worth it.  He is so worth it.

Little Girl

So there is this thing...

it's so strange and makes me feel sort of ashamed, but it is real and it is true.

I still cannot look of pictures of Cory as a child.  In honor of her birthday, someone found and sent me dozens and dozens of pictures of her in elementary school.  I couldn't even go through them, just saw the first couple of images and fled, my heart in flames, feeling panicked and horrified.   It hurts too much to see her pre-braces teeth and her narrow little chest.  It cuts me wide open to see her face so full of wonder, not knowing she wouldn't have a full life, a family of her own... children.

It's hard to explain, but it almost seems like that little girl of mine disappeared.  My fear is that people will forget she existed.  And while the photos are proof that she did, and the gesture of sending them means people haven't...they kill me all the same- just lay me out.  I still haven't made peace with the fact that I can't lay my eyes on the grown up face of that little girl.  I'll never be able to puzzle out those initial features that still exist in the adult lines and planes of my child's face.  A parent should be able to do that.  They should have access.

Someday, I will moon over her childhood photos, every single one I can gather, and I will be so incredibly grateful for the treasure that they are.   I'm sure of it.  Just not yet.  It still hurts too much.  And this thing, this nightmare, is a day by day operation.  Sometimes hour to hour.  Even moment to moment.

It's not time yet.

Circling Back

Grief is circular.  Years later, you are back to a spot you'd been before...and before...and before.

I spent the better part of last night grilling my EMT friend, Jen, about all the steps and protocol related to Cory's accident.  Poor Jen.  I felt like an ass for asking her the God awful questions and she felt like an ass for telling me the answers.  I felt even worse when I realized this was not the first time I'd imposed on our friendship to pick through her medical knowledge like some buzzard on the prowl.  Her answer?  "I'll tell you as many times as you need me to."

That's a friend, right there.

And in the course of this all too aggressive Q & A period- done through facebook IM, many parts beginning to feel like raised voices and other parts causing periods of uncontrollable sobbing- I learned three medical terms for heart rhythms, but still not the reason my girl had to die.  Poor Jen.  She doesn't have that answer.  Bless her heart for enduring my pressing demands for it.

All that information, all that jargon, all the protocol- I pinned all my hopes on it.  As if I really believe in my heart that if I understood what happened, specifically, and could line it up, the way I like to process things, I would be ok with the final outcome.  What a fool I am.

Electrical activity...severed spinal cord...fixed and dilated pupils...they're all the same question, that I apparently have refused to stop asking:  "Can this please not be true anymore?"

Still bargaining at this late stage of the grief game.  Damn, Nick.  Damn.

I did manage to gather one piece of information from Jen that I didn't have before.  Her friend, Mark, a firefighter, was the first one to get to Cory.  And he is a nice guy.  A father.  She told me it took him a long time and many conversations to convince her that nothing else could've been done for Cory.  I just wish he could convince me.

Calling In

My husband asked me today why I called into work, or rather drove home from work about ten minutes after I got there.  If I had not been so tired, I would've cocked my hip and raised my eyebrow and waited for him to figure it out while I got good and mad because he didn't already know.  But I was exhausted so I just said, "Cause I feel like crap" and dove under the covers, sure to keep a nice, long, disgusted distance between us as I did so.

Cause I feel like crap.

Yes, but more specifically...
sad, angry, riddled with guilt.  I feel so anxious I'm not sure I should be driving.  The flashbacks have been back for the last two or three weeks and they are bad.  I am fighting Cory's coming birthday with everything I have.  Each new age brings its own set of sorrows to marvel over.  I have accepted that she is dead and never coming back, yes I have done that.  But I'm still absolutely outraged by the unfairness of it all.  I still want to succumb to the screaming fits that occasionally come knocking and I still wander on tiptoes into my dining room at 2 a.m. some nights to thumb through a pile of paperwork till I come across a certain woman's name and address.  I still want to talk to her.  There are a few things I want to say to her. And what happens is that I don't say them to her so instead I say them in some vague way to other people, here and there-Tim mostly, just because he is nearby.

I am angry, too, that taking an anti-depressant didn't seem to help all that much.  I haven't been taking them for the last few months and I'm no more and no less suicidal or depressed than I was to begin with.  She is still dead.  There is no pill for that.  Thanks for trying to tell me there was, Dr. Z.  I appreciate the lie and I still love you, anyways.

Why didn't I go to work today?  Try this:

Try imagining you'd let your beloved child walk down to the store FOR YOU to be a big boy, Tim, and then a few minutes later found him splattered across the road.  Jacob.  Splattered.  Jacob- the one you'd raised since babyhood and never, ever abandoned.  Are you there yet?
 Now try imagining what's it's like to then see him face down on the road with his hair in his face dozens of times a day.  Dozens- in the car while you're driving, in the shower, in bed with your head against your pillow.  Try imagining having the rescue worker come tell you he was gone.  Try imagining screaming as your knees gave way.  Try imagining the certainty- absolute and complete certainty- that it was all your fault.

Now try to understand why sometimes I have nothing to say and I don't want to talk about it.  Try to understand why I sometimes have absolutely zero interest in putting up motherfucking shelves with you.  My child, my baby is about to turn twenty three in the ground.  You met her when she was four years old and you gave her away for three years.  She was never your baby.  How could you possibly understand?  Just try.  Okay?  Just try.

Try to understand that this is me doing the best I can.  I haven't overdosed.  I haven't slit my wrists.  I am trying to notice my son and love him with all of my heart even though he could very well die tomorrow and I'd feel all of this all over again.  I am gonna have days when I'm mean not because I hate anyone in particular but because I hate myself.  I'll have a lot of days when I hate the world just because Cory's no longer in it.  I am no longer a girl you can make happy with a new purse and a pair of jeans.  If you can't handle that, it's fine.  Go find someone who wants to put up shelves cause I am doing the best I can.  I am surviving.

Uh Oh

As Cory's birthday gets closer, I find myself hypersensitive around others her age or even around talk of others her age.  I mentally make a list of all the things she didn't get to have or to do and it bows me over.  I resent the parents of the live children; I almost resent the live children themselves.  I resent the driver and I resent God (or would resent him if I were absolutely certain of his existence, which since the grotesque and highly unjust death of my firstborn, I'm just frankly not).

I mourn- again- over Cory's too short life.  I beat myself up- again- for making the bad call to let her walk to the store.  And then, I find myself standing on the side of the road that unbearably hot July afternoon just past four, beside an incredibly kind stranger, again taking it all in- the trauma to her tiny body (the police scanner reported her to be ten or twelve, I believe, due to her petite size), the confusion, the horror.

Lately, I've wondered a lot about her last moments, or even that single last moment.  Surely, she was in her survival brain state- fight, flight, or freeze.  I wonder if the car was coming so fast that she didn't have time to even try to move out of the way or if when she saw it coming, she simply froze to the spot, horror stricken.  "Uh oh..."  I think about this, because I can't help it, and my heart breaks for her a little bit more.