Confessions From the Rabbit Hole

It is quiet down here in the dark.  Usually only one person at a time can fit in the rabbit hole.  Tim and I have been taking turns.  When he is down, I run the show, and keep the household afloat.  When I am down, he takes the reins.  When we are both down, Jake gives us cues for his basic needs that we struggle to fulfill…dinner, clean laundry, conversation.

Angie was the first one to mention the five stages of grief to me.  I was, on that particular day, pissed off beyond measure at the universe…all the parents with children alive and healthy, my husband, my son, my friends, strangers, the driver, God, Cory’s biological father.  I remember feeling as if I could cut the air with my sharp words as I screamed at Angie through the phone, “I already know about the stupid five stages of grief!  I know how to Google.”  My voice could not convey the haughty and childish expression on my face as I informed her, “ They’re stupid, and I’m just not gonna do them-  you can’t make me!”  The only thing I forgot to do was blow her a raspberry.

Oh, how Angie must have chuckled at my passion and arrogant ignorance.  If I wasn’t going to do them, they certainly meant to do me, as may times as they wanted, whether I said “yea, nay, or maybe”.  The five stages of grief:  shock/denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  They became my personal harbingers of hell.  Sometimes they visited me one at a time, other times it was a group event.  They stalked me in earnest, following me into my sleep, and cramming themselves into the rabbit hole right with me each and every time I hid.

Notice the lovely irony here that even as I denied my participation in these stages of grief to Angie, I was engulfed in Anger.  Oh, it would be funny, if it weren’t so sad. 

So what goes on in the rabbit hole?  Let me tell you about my last stay there.

After running into my friend at the coffeeshop a couple of weeks ago, and realizing I had for the first time explained Cory’s death, but not blamed myself, I enjoyed a day or so of pride and accomplishment.  Look at that girl, she made her own cue cards, and actually managed to change her thinking!  Maybe I would be okay…someday.  Someone who could change their thinking, should be able to keep themselves alive.  Right?

Well, I think my progress had a certain ricochet effect.  As soon as I realized I might be feeling better, I put a stop to that in a hurry.  How dare I?  I mean, really, how could I walk around and hold my head high when my heart, the person most important to me in the world, was in the ground?  And on the heels of that came the whisper, yeah, especially since you put her there.

Boom, the hidden trap door slid open silently, and my footing was a memory.  I was down.  The only questions were how far would I fall and how long would I stay?

Anything goes in the rabbit hole:  pure hatred (always for yourself, occasionally for others), self-indulgence, nostalgia, heartbreak, self-pity, fury, and the like.  It is a mixed bag.  I spent the next couple of nights tossing and turning, waking up every few hours from the most vivid dreams in which I committed unspeakable and vile acts of revenge upon the driver who struck and killed my daughter.

I do enjoy scary movies.  Perhaps, that’s where my mind stored up enough ghastly images to produce these dreams.  Maybe, or maybe my mind was just acting out what I’d wanted to do from the moment that man told me she was gone.

My daydreams following the accident had always passed the messy job of  murder off to my husband….what is a man for if not to defend the honor of his family?  But in my sleep, I wouldn’t leave this job to anyone else…not when I would take such pleasure in the act.

So, there I was, with the driver’s address scribbled down on a scrap of paper (God bless the stupidity of the police department who printed her address right on the police report) stuffed into my jeans pocket, wearing a dark stocking cap, and gloves like I was some type of cat burglar.  In my dream, I drove to her home, not so far from mine, night after night…watching, working up my nerve.  Finally, my body made one pivotal move…I opened my car door and clunked it quietly shut.  There was no turning back now.  It was dark, and the  neighborhood quiet.  I crept across her well-kept lawn, stopping only to pick up a heavy stone garden gnome.  I had a moment as I hauled it to her doorstep to wonder if she’d been in a rush to get home and catch up on her yardwork.  Well, that would no longer be a problem.  Premeditated murder, anyone?

Before I could change my mind, I knocked on her door and waited patiently for the sound of her slippered feet shuffling towards the door.  When she opened the door, I had a split second to take in an old, almost elderly face peering out quizzically before I hefted that gnome over my head with both hands and split her head wide open right where she stood in her faded nightgown and fluffy robe.  She fell bonelessly into the opening of the door.  I waded in, and finished the job until I couldn’t lift my arms anymore.  The whole time, blood splattering, and horrible gurgling noises coming from the ground, all I could see was Cory’s blue lips, her dirty face, her twisted arm, her shirt cut open, her bra showing… drivers on the road slowing down to try to see what had happened.  Not my girl, not my girl, not my girl!

In my dream, I made not one sound.  I clenched my teeth with every downward arc.  When I woke in the morning, my teeth hurt horribly; I had been clenching them in my sleep.

Was the nightmare over?

No, sometimes they just keep on going.

In my dream, I looked down at the woman’s face, and realized I had just killed a defenseless old woman in cold blood.  My dream self was some kind of mean bitch, cause I simply nodded at a job well done, and began dragging her body around back.

So picture me, one of the least aggressive women you will ever meet, getting an axe from the trunk that I could only drag, and proceeding to chop the body into pieces and bundle them into weeping, bloody piles tied with rags.  I made a semi-tidy pile, and then went back to my car for suitcases.  How many suitcases does it take to dispose of a human body?  In my sleeping mind, it took one large, one medium, a duffle bag, and an overnight bag…for the little pieces.  They all matched.

Surely having left enough evidence to imprison me for life, I hauled the dismembered body out to my car, and stuffed it in the trunk.  I was covered in blood from head to toe.  As I started the car, I glanced at my face in the rearview mirror, and almost jumped when I didn’t recognize the eyes as my own.  I turned on the dome light, and looked again…wait a minute, my eyes aren’t green, they’re blue. 

And in the way dreams have, my face morphed into Cory’s, her eyes wide and bright, but her face covered in blood, and her lips the darkest blue.