It's a chain reaction: stress breeds grief attacks, health problems, and sleep issues. With the sleep issues come the flashbacks. The flashbacks keep me awake half the night, agitated and just sick to my stomach, feeling every bit like I'm back with the rescue workers staring down at the remains of my daughter. Once I finally get to sleep, the nightmares plague me. The next day, I'm anything but well-rested which feeds my anxiety. Anxiety causes flashbacks, too. So there's the whole unholy, vicious circle.
Last night, when I finally got to sleep, I had a dream that Cory was back at home, unharmed and the accident in never-never land. I kept calling her down from her bedroom but she never responded. I ran up the stairs to give her what-for for staying up half the night with a flashlight and book under the covers, and found her lying on the bed, quite dead. The terror I felt and the way I screamed up at the sky was every bit as real as what had happened on the side of West Michigan on the fifth of July three years ago. Immediately, memories of her from babyhood on up flooded my brain and I could only think, much as I had that hot afternoon, well, that's it. It's over. I would like to die now, too.
My nightmares always have some horrific, graphic content, and this one was no exception. In that just-do-it, no arguing logic way of dreams, I bent over and hoisted her body up in my arms. I left her room, carrying her with tears screaming down my face and what felt like every vein I possessed ready to burst. I carried her out of the house, and begin carrying her through the streets, my back bowing over with the effort, knowing if I dropped her I would never be able to look at myself in the mirror again. It was my duty to carry her corpse as far as humanly possible, so carry her I did.
To my horror and dismay, I looked down and discovered that pieces of her were falling off her torso as I made my laborious way down West Michigan, and there was nothing I could do about it. There was no way to put her back together again. She was just broken, and I was somehow responsible. What kind of mother was I? I couldn't even carry her corpse intact. This is all your fault, Nick. You're bad. You suck.
I woke up with my face wet with tears and my whole body in a damp sweat. Her face in my dream had looked exactly the way I always remembered it, and I couldn't get the image of her head dangling backwards towards the ground as I carried her out of my mind.
Once I'd been awake for a little bit, another intrusive memory barged its way in. She'd been knocked out of her Hello Kitty tennis shoes. How hard do you have to hit someone to knock them out of the shoes, one shoe landing at each far side of the scene? How could she be knocked out of her shoes when they were still tied when I got them back from the police? How could that NOT hurt? She had to have felt the initial impact. My heart can hardly bear this thought.
And from there,
how could the driver not have seen her? How was she so completely unaware of her immediate surroundings? Since when are drivers not supposed to watch out for pedestrians? How could she have not only hit her, but never even braked? How is that not careless? How is that not negligent? How did she kill someone and walk away with no consequences whatsoever?
I hope I can get some sleep tonight.
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