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.