Going Back

I get that I sound like a broken record.  That's what grief is, after all.  It just goes on...as long as you do.
I just ordered my new Hobonichi journals for the coming year, and spent some time looking back through the last year so far in my old ones.  I notice a definitive lightening in my artwork.  There are still grim days, but there are also some smiles and pictures of cats nesting in colorful handbags.  Lady, my therapist, used to say that trauma gave you the narrowest of all possible world views- the only thing you could see or think about was the incident.  And then, over time, your view widens a bit, and a bit more.  Eventually, you realize Anne Frank was right, "there is still beauty to be seen".
However, there are still horrors, too.  Do not be fooled by the Susie Sunshines of the world.  They lie.

I pulled in McDonald's the other day to get a Large Coke, extra ice, and passed directly by a parked ambulance.  I could've reached my arm out the window and touched it.  It was the closest I've physically been to a rescue vehicle since the accident.  My reaction was instantaneous, and alarming.  I bent at the waist like someone with whiplash and gagged, suddenly certain I was going to dump my lunch into my lap, just like that.
A vehicle.  Just a vehicle.  Not even the same one, I'm sure.  But there it was...parked in the McDonald's on the side of West Fricking Michigan Avenue, sure and right in its presence to be there helping to save lives.  I couldn't look at it anymore, just sort of mentally mean-mugged it, and fought with my gorge.
Within seconds of seeing that stupid ambulance, I'd also been forced to stand again on the hot pavement, screaming and craning to see her face, desperate to know she was okay, out of my mind with worry, waiting to get in the ambulance with her and go to the hospital where she would be made well because that is what is done.  They show it on tv and in the movies all the time.  The heroine survives.
The unfairness that it did not go that way just overwhelms me.  It fills my soul with a bitter, black gall that coats everything I see.  Nothing can be good in a world without my CoryGirl.  You must know what?  Surely, I've told you what she meant to me, and you've heard enough stories by now to wish you'd met her and known her, too.
Occasionally, during these flashbacks and for some time after, I go back to tunnel vision.  Just me and some strangers by the side of the road with my girl who was already dead when I got there.  Already dead.  I shake my head, bow it in defeat, and nothing changes.  Is it really so strange to feel I am being punished?

Better luck to you, your child, and your ambulance, should you ever need one.