What It Is and What It's Not

It is this conversation:

"Jake, do you want to go trick or treating this year?"

"No, thanks."

"Why not?"  I asked.

"It's no fun without Cory.  I tried it last year, and it just wasn't worth it."



It's this one, too, a forty year old daughter texting with her I phone savvy seventy five year old mother:

me:  Jake is passing out candy to the trick or treaters.

mom:  Good, he's having fun.  Bless his little heart.  He probably likes that.  That child is growing up on us.

me <pause of indecision here...do I say what I feel?>

me:  He grew up July 5, 2012.

mom:  I know, honey... I think we all grew older starting then.

It's the way I look forward to the wind blowing because I might catch the tinkling, silvery notes of her windchimes, which somehow manage to marry sadness with joy.  I asked Jake once if he thought those sounds were just the wind or his sister.  "Both", he replied with confidence.  "How does that work?"  I asked him.  He responded, "I don't know.  It just is."

It's coming across the slick Ziploc bag in your dresser drawer while getting ready for work in the morning.  Inside is a shirt with her scent that you must protect at all costs.  Moments go by unnoticed as you struggle to decide if opening it to smell her will help or hurt.

It's hearing someone mention bbq porkchops in conversation, which takes you back to Cory,7, Cory, 8, Cory,9, who loved Timber's grilled bbq porkchops with extra sauce more than anything, and would gorge her tiny body till she nearly burst.

It's her fluffy bathrobe still up in the bathroom.  It's reaching for a towel without looking, and getting the hot pink one that she claimed as hers only, using others only when it was not clean, and with such disdain.

It's the stifling guilt that you should have given her more, until you read the quote that says, "Children will not value the things you give them as much as the feeling of being cherished."  Then you breathe again, because that you did do, and you did it well.

It's opening the silverware drawer to get out utensils for the take-out - really, who around here cooks anymore- and passing over her "special" fork, which used to worry you, thinking she'd taken on autistic traits on top of everything else for Pete's sake, what with her rigidity to use anything else, but eventually realized a simple fork brought an everyday predictability to her unpredictable illness.

It's walking through the building at work and hearing a snatch of "Home" on someone's desk radio, which brings two memories home with alarming speed.  You may miss a step but you keep walking as you remember the slideshow a teenage Cory with high hopes of reconciliation and a nuclear family with her father included had made, and how she'd showed it to her father, hoping to make him smile.  You remember how she'd play it just to see our faces all together in the frame, and dream of a better day.  You take a moment to mourn for her hopes and that family, which you had wanted with all your heart since you were sixteen years old.  Then the other side crashes in, the footage of the slideshow at the visitations and her service.  Heavy steps, heavier, heaviest.

It is closing your eyes in bed at night to writhe away from the casket.

It's dreaming about her, and waking up to her laugh still ringing in your ears.

It's coming so many steps to go backwards at a moment's notice, one hand over your face, blocking your eyes, but never the one inside...never that one.  It's taking both small hands and scrubbing your face, trying to clear the terrible knowledge, but it refuses to budge, and sits on your contenance like a newborn's caul...sadly, no good luck to be had from it, only pain and misery.

It is daydreaming about just not coming home from work one day.  Checking in at some hotel, pulling out the crappy stationary, and writing your goodbyes one by one.  Going to sleep and never waking up again.

Cory would understand.  She knew misery. 

It is not easier the second year.

It is not honest to pretend you're ok when you're not.

It is not being an attention seeking drama queen to document this trip into hell without artifice. 

Tell the truth.  Tell the truth.  Tell the truth.

I'm falling to pieces.