Pictures of You

Okay, so the video...


completely undid me.


I hadn't watched it since she made it -which was several years ago, and well before the accident.  When you stumble on a picture or a video of your dead child that you didn't realize you had, it can be equal parts beautiful and dark.  The stills are a little more forgiving, as they have captured and thus frozen Cory in a single moment of time.  But the technology of videos...dear God, to watch her move!  Do you understand what that does to a person?


I cued that sucker up in no time, and sat back, my heart a galloping, wild, run away horse.  I was as eager and strangely, sickly, excited as I'd been to go collect Cory's things at the police station.  I was positive I wanted these images, certain they would bring me joy and that for a few moments, we would be reunited.  That is always the promise.  The reality is never quite the same.


I hit play, and there she was.  Every frame was an explosion of life and color.  My eyes clung to her image:  her eyes, her smile, her hands.  I watched the spectrum of facial expressions that I knew all too well.  I focused on her posture, her movements, the tilt of her head.  I felt overstuffed with pride and delight to feast on her antics- her silliness, her creativeness, her comedic timing.  It was all laid out like a sumptuous meal made especially for me.  I took to it like I was starving.  Should I mention that Jake was in the video with her?  My dynamic duo, my heart was laid right out on the screen for the world to see.


All the pleasure signals in my brain were on hit.  Things were firing so rapidly, I could scarcely contain myself.  That was my girl, there, so beautiful and alive!  I wanted to run out into my yard with my laptop and show strangers passing by.  "Isn't she beautiful?  Isn't she funny?  Isn't she ALIVE?"  I'd ask them, cackling madly, and appearing wholly lost to my delusion.
It was an all time high, and a total shock to the system. 


Then it was over.
Immediately following that, I remembered that I would never see her again.


My heart plunged into this black realization.  As a mother, my journey of watching her grow had been cruelly cut short.  As her friend, I crumbled inside to know I would never be in her glorious company again.  It was overwhelming.


Watching the video had involved putting on blinders of a sort- playing pretend that she was still flesh and bones, moving and thinking and feeling.  In much the same way that I submerged myself in that delirious make believe joy, I also closed myself off when the video ended.  I could no longer see any other person, purpose, struggle, or success that the world offered.   My brain pulsed out one repetitive thought:  I want Cory; I want Cory; I want Cory.


I was done for.  I whooped in one giant breath and completely lost myself.  I screwed my eyes up tight and wished for death, wished to be out of this pain once and for all.  It was just too much to bear.  I no longer cared if this happened to other people out there who survived and set good grieving examples for their remaining children or found ways to give the love they carried for their child back to the world at large.  I just wanted OUT.  I opened my eyes on a Cory-less world, and began to have a full scale panic attack.


 Do you know the kind?  You start to think maybe you're having a genuine heart attack.  You struggle to breathe.  You start to feel like the walls are closing in on you.  There is an undeniable sense of DOOM.  Your senses scream DANGER!  DANGER!  DANGER!


What happened next is that Tim comforted me the only way he really knows how:  he administered medication.  And when he stepped out of the room, I may have helped myself to a little bit more of my anxiety medication that was strictly necessary.  What may have happened is that I lost about a day and a half, and scared the absolute shit out of myself.


It was another two days before I could piece together what had happened, and try to figure out what to do about it.