Conversations With Jacob

Where am I right now?  That's an easy one.  I'm in a very crowded Starbucks coffee shop, crammed into a side table, kitty corner from a delightful old man, sitting with his wife, who just said this to me with a grin, "Someone must really love you!"  before holding out his gnarled left hand, and pointed to the ring finger with his right.

I smiled back at him.  "Do-overs cost extra!"

He and his wife giggled politely.

Where am I really?
That's a harder question to answer.  I'm out of the well, that much I know.  I wore makeup three out of five workdays this week.  I showered daily.  I'm not to the point of cooking dinner every night or anything; let's not be ridiculous.

There is snow flying, and as much as I want to pull out the pics of Jake and Cory on sleds, I haven't.  I have been told by nearly everyone to stop living in the past.  This sounds like such a healthy and reasonable piece of advice.   Unless, of course, the person receiving it happens to be a mother who has lost her child.  How am I supposed to try, on purpose, to live in a world in which she doesn't exist?  Forget disloyalty, and all that...it just doesn't even sound like a place I'd want to be.

Cory being forgotten is my biggest fear.  I don't mean to, but I drill family members for memories of her regularly.  I go up to complete strangers and show them her picture.  I can't help myself.

And Jacob, being ten when Cory died...how much will he really remember about her and their life together?

Jacob and I rode to the post office the other day and back.  On the way, we got into a conversation about how Veterans are treated, and from there about the accusations being made to certain psychiatric hospitals in the news of late.  We talked about how horrible it is for people in authority to take advantage of people whose illnesses have put them in a very vulnerable place.

This, of course, led to conversations about when Cory was hospitalized, and how she was treated where she stayed.  And from there, the couple of times that Tim was hospitalized, which was something Jacob wasn't even aware of.

I asked Jacob if he remembered when Cory was sick.  He said yes, and ticked off a list of memories:  when she thought the cats were spies, when she thought there were cameras hidden all over the house, the clown in the basement.

I shook my head to all.  He was right.  There was all of that, and more.

Curious, I asked him how he remembered Cory being when she was sick- scared, sad, mean?

He answered back in the same order, "I remember her scared and sad, sometimes mean.  Remember that one time at grandma and grandpa's when she pushed me down the stairs?"

"Yes.  You remember that?  I wasn't sure if you did; you were so little."

"I remember."  he repeats, and then says nothing, eyes to his lap.


"You know Cory didn't mean to hurt you or ever hurt your feelings."

"I know."

I asked them if it was scary to him when Cory was sick.

He said this, "yeah, like when she saw people at the top of the stairs that weren't there or talked about the clown, I knew it wasn't real, but it was still creepy to hear her talk about it, because she was really really scared.  It made me scared."

Yes, that I had known.  Heck, it made me scared, and I'd been an adult.

We didn't say anything for a minute or two, just rode along, both us lost in our memories of that particular nightmare.

Before I could ask him if he remembered when Cory thought she could fly, he broke in with this,
"I was sad for her, Mom.  But now that I'm older, and I understand it better, I'm even more sad for her."

I grabbed his hand and held it till the next stoplight.

After we'd returned home and wrapped our evening, I asked him one last question.  It was this:
"Jake, do you remember Cory before she got sick?"

He responded reluctantly, "Not really.  I remember stuff like going to Florida a little bit.  But mainly I remember when she started getting sick and after.  You know, it was kind of a big deal."

I went to bed with this on my heart, hating that mental illness could overshadow a little boy's memories of his big sister.  But at some point, in the dark, my chin came up because Cory was never her illness, and bits of her fought to get through those voices and delusions every moment of every day.  She was strong that way.

Just like the accident for me, certain memories have been assigned a certain weight and significance in Jake's mind.  Sooner or later, all the moments that weren't filled with trauma will float to the top.  It might just take a little while.