Veils

I thought today about how looking at holidays now feels like looking through a veil.  Everything is darker now, less focused, and seen through a filter of deep sadness.  How upset Cory would be to think that is the way I see the world now and that it is has anything to do with her?  She was the joy-bringer.  She was the magic and the sparkle.  The two of us together?  We set the world on fire, or at least the room we were in, in my not-so-humble opinion.

So then, the veil cannot be Cory.  That is not fair to someone who, despite her suffering, went out of her way to make other people smile and laugh.

So what the fuck is this veil?  Will I have to wear it always?  Is this what I'm meant to do?

Is the veil depression?  That would explain why it's so damn heavy.  Or how sometimes my arms themselves feel like they have bricks tied to them and I can't even reach up to push it aside for even a day.  When you can't brush your hair, who has the energy for fiddling with veils?

Is the veil trauma?  Some synonyms for veil as a verb hit home.  Hide.  Shield.  Surround.  
Don't get too close to anything that makes you feel that good again, Nicole.  If you do, someone or Someone, might take it away.  You'll be in the pit again with no way out, wishing for death.  Better to keep your distance from the moments that make your heart that vulnerable.

Maybe the veil is grief.  Envelop.  Surround.  Conceal.  Cloak.  Blanket. Shroud.
If it is, I will wear it to my grave.  We've become frienemies, you see.  I hate grief, but I cling to it, as well.  It is the measure of the love for my girl.  It is my last tie to her.  Even as the cords burn my skin, cut off my circulation, and sometimes threaten my well-being...I will not let go.  I cannot.  There is no moving on.  There is moving forward...and backward...and forward again.  There are detours and roadblocks...unexpected accidents.  I am often, unintentionally, one of those rubber neckers who has to slow down to see the carnage.  There is no other way, but through.  There is only room for one on the path.

I remember my dear, sweet father telling me that God had known Cory's death date since the day she was born.  He reminded me that the Bible says that God knows each hair on our heads.  With my crisis of faith, I am not so sure.  I know there are a ton of people who believe just that, and a ton of people who find those ideas illogical.

Here's what I know about this veil, whatever it may be.  It has been in progress since I was 18 years old, pregnant and scared.  It has grown in length every year that precious girl was in my presence.  Every belly laugh.  Every tear.  Every time she threw her hands up in the air in joy.  Every time she couldn't lift her head under the weight of her illness.

The question now is what would Cory want me to do with this veil?  What did she do with hers?

Did a Thing

So I did a tiny thing that may actually be a big thing.  I haven't quite decided yet how I feel about it.

Returning to work a few weeks after Cory died was beyond difficult.  I was, as you can imagine, barely functioning.  My brain was a frazzled old school pin ball machine, that sent me veering from one obsessive, negative thought pattern to another.
There were the frightening images of Cory's body
on the road and the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I recalled shutting the lid of her
casket.   There was the shock and disbelief...had this horrible thing really happened?  Unpleasant adrenaline coursed through my body constantly, which I can only describe as the feeling of being chased by someone with a knife.
 More than anything my back was bowed over with the weight of  massive guilt and
self-loathing that I had, in my mind, sent my daughter, my dearest girl, to her death.  I couldn't stand up straight to save my life.  All too often,
and certainly unbidden, came the haunting, soul-crushing billow of the sheet floating down over her body.  All I saw before me was an endless blackness; non-stop pain. I spent a lot of time checking for the nearest exits.

Those were my minute to minute thoughts.  These were overlaid with feelings of fear that something else horrible would happen, feelings of inability to do anything properly, and an overwhelming feeling of being naked and vulnerable to everyone's scrutiny.

It took a transition object to make the eight minute trip from my house to work everyday.  I had, in typical Nicole-fashion ordered about fifteen necklaces and bracelets with Cory's picture on them.  Figure out how to live without her?  That was a hard no.  Figure out how to act normal in public?  Not so much.  Figure out how to match the right piece of Cory jewelry with the right outfit?  That my brain could do.

 So once I arrived at work, necklace in tow, I found the large bulletin board in my office waiting for me to fill it with pictures of Cory.  When asked, it was the one thing I requested.  I could not be without my girl.  During those first few months, my only wishes were to a) crawl beneath the ground with her  b) spend extended time at the cemetery beside her grave or c) spend every waking moment keeping her memory as fresh and alive as I could by poring over her pictures, her belongings, and carefully cataloging anything her hands had come across.

So I brought in a stack of 4 x 6 pictures and got to work on the bulletin board, making it my Safe Place.  When did I last feel safe?  When my children were both alive, of course. I have moved offices four times in the last six and a half years.  Each time the same pictures of Cory, a very young Jacob, and Cory's deceased cat, Church, made the trip along with me.

I have never changed it.  This brought me comfort.  I can only compare it to the way I keep Cory's room exactly the same as it was when she died.  It is my proof that she existed.  It is sacred.

So year after year, my brain has gotten a little more healthy.  I still have rough times, but I can mostly anticipate them and I've developed better self-care skills. At least most of the time (insert grin here, no one is perfect).

Once and awhile, when feeling as good as one can feel when their child is gone, I'd look up at that bulletin board and realize Jake is six, seven, eight, and nine years old in all of them.  He will be seventeen next month.  He is almost a legal adult.

Do I feel safe yet?
Maybe that depends on the day you ask me. And the dreams I had the night before.

But a couple of weeks ago, I took the best picture of Jacob with my new phone.  I just love it.  So last week, I printed it out and stuck it up on my Safe Place board at work...a tiny 2 x 3 addition of the present to my treasured past.  I clipped it up there and stood back, waiting to see what I would feel.

I instantly felt two things.  First:  pride and love.  Second:  guilt.

Would Cory think I had forgotten her?  Would she think I was "moving on"?  Had I disturbed the careful time capsule of the happiest time of my life?  Would Cory get farther away?

I reached up my hand to take it down, but then left it up.
We shall see.