I Don't Like Being Pushed & What All That Hat-Wearing Is About

One thing I have learned on this Godforsaken journey is that no one can take your steps in grief for you.  Nor can you be pushed into them. 


I have a vague idea that I may one day need to explore the perspective of the driver.  I am not ready to do so.  Every time I try to put myself in the shoes of a stricken sixty-something year old woman who has struck and killed another human being with her vehicle, and just allow myself to feel...something...my daughter's broken body on the road appears in my mind, and I am stopped short, my senses overloaded with a real time reliving of the horror.  All well intentioned ideas of forgiveness and healing are hurled out the window in an instant as she lies there, so still and so unnaturally. 


It must be my brain is still working on accepting the death itself.  I have a feeling that any facets of grief yet unexplored don't mind waiting.  They'll be there when I get to them.  Surely.


It makes me wonder what my feelings towards the driver might be by this point in my journey if I had not arrived on the scene before the emergency responders, and seen her the way that I did.  If I had been one of those poor souls who had instead gotten a phone call or a knock on the door from someone in a uniform, would it be different?  I suspect it might.


And although I run down the damn road in my red t-shirt and khaki shorts endlessly in my nightmares, I can't imagine not wanting that chance.  I didn't get there in time.  But I tried.   Cory knows that I ran like I have never ran before- not as a child in a footrace with my sister's boyfriend, not as an adult trying to get in shape.   I ran like I would run for my life.  That's what she was, you know- my life.


People wonder how I could still be having such a hard time with this.  I mean after all, we're edging up to two years.  When is she going to get back to her old routine?  When will she start acting normal again?  Get back to her old self?


Let me save you the ponderings:  never.
  I will never be back to my old routine.  I will never act the same as a mother who has never lost a child.  My old self is gone. 


There is the pain and misery that the finality of death brings.  Additionally, there is  horrible fear and confusion.  Was I a little skittish before?  Yes.  I am never comfortable in large groups, and worry a lot about things I can't control.  But now it's different.  In some horrible, twisted fashion, the accident reinforced all my anxiety and pessimism.  I was right to worry all along.  The world is quite a dangerous and unfair place, after all, isn't it?


The confusion is simply something I wrote in my journal just the other day:  I feel so displaced in a world without Cory.


A parent must mourn the loss of their child.  If they have other children, they must continue to care for another human being when they often aren't taking very good care of themselves.  Further still, they must do the incredibly difficult job of forging themselves a new identity.


You have to ask yourself who you are.  Why are you here?  For what purpose were you left behind, when your child was taken?  If you were previously a caregiver due to illness as I was to Cory, what in the world are you to do with all of this free time?  What relationships in your life are worth salvaging after the storm of loss has blown across them, creating distance, indifference, and withdrawal? 


It's a huge lot of unpleasant tasks.  It can be overwhelming.  I can't speak for everyone, but once awhile I just have to put my head down and catch my breath.


And if I have to work that day, and enter the public, I wear a hat in memory of my girl.  She never stopped trying to have a good day.  I was her comfort, and now she is mine.


---to be continued