My Hypocrisy

So look...

I got really frustrated with Jacob yesterday...sweet, mild-mannered, easy-going Jacob.  I know.  I can't believe it, either.  He has to be the most compliant fourteen year old out there.

We'll take the sexist PMS thing right off the table.  Maybe we'll replace it with the fact that this particular week of the year I am pretty much an unpredictable grab bag of strong emotions.

What happened?

Well, Jake and I went to grab some dinner at Subway the other night.  I have been trying to go grocery shopping for about five days now.  How do you try, but fail, at something so simple as going grocery shopping?  It's the same as anything else, you procrastinate.  With Cory's death date looming, the last things in the free world that I want to be doing are grocery shopping and/or cooking dinner since these activities prompted the errand that put her in harm's way.

I made a joke the other day to my sister about it:  I'm just gonna embrace it and eat my way through the fifth of July, one restaurant at a time.  Where else can I run to?  Italy is not in the budget this year.  So even though it's not very affordable and not particularly healthy,  Jake and I have been eating out night after night after night, always with my weak promise to hit the store the next day and make enchiladas for dinner at home like a good mother.
  There are worse ways to cope, trust me.

So back to Subway.  I was halfway through having my sandwich made when I realized the handsome young man preparing it was Cory's friend's little brother.  I can't believe I didn't recognize him at first, but his hair was tied back and he looks like a young man now and not a boy.  Sure enough, when I glanced down at the hands preparing my food, there was a purple Cory bracelet around one wrist.  She is not forgotten.

This one single act massaged some salve onto my bleeding heart, and I felt better for the first time in days...the last time being when I noticed that my nephew had worn his Cory bracelet in his wedding pictures.  She is not forgotten.

And while I sometimes think perusing Facebook just makes me feel worse...a playground of all the happy people with their weddings and babies, the posts and pictures from Cory's friends have started to pop up.  She is not forgotten.

But back to Jake and Subway- I asked Jake once again why he doesn't wear Cory's bracelet.  He shrugged at first, then said, "They're too big."  If you haven't seen Jake lately, he's as tall as I am.  Maybe the bracelet was too big four years ago, but I doubted it to be true now.  I took one off my wrist and had him try it on.  He humored me, demonstrating how it fell down over his hand if his arm hung down slack.  I showed him how mine did the the same exact thing; we are a slim-wrist people.  He handed it back to me, saying maybe he would wear it later.

"Is it because it's purple?  Are you afraid people will say it's girly?"  I pressed.

"Maybe."  he answered.  I answered this with a canned speech about gender-bias and then laid out all the examples of strong males in his life who wear the purple proudly.

He listened, but didn't respond, and certainly didn't ask for a bracelet.

So that hole in my heart just got bigger.  When I feel like Cory isn't being being seen, I go into fight mode.  I pointed out that I didn't think the nice young man at the counter even knew Cory very well, but her death and her life had obviously touched him.  "You were her brother, Jake.  So what if someone asks what the purple bracelet is for?  It will give you a chance to say her name and tell them about her.  Don't you want to do that?"

As he does in almost all conflicts of opinion, Jake went silent.  His message was clear.  No, he didn't want to say her name, and he didn't want to talk about her.

Since I struggle so deeply to understand this, I just went ahead and made things worse by saying, "Jacob, if things were reversed, if you had died, and Cory were here, don't you think she'd wear your bracelet?"

Monstrous, I know.

I am the first one to call shit on someone telling me how to grieve.  The ones who tell me to move on, move forward, do this do that, stop dwelling...what do I say to them?  You have no right.  You have no idea what you would do if it happened to you.  So obviously I'm a complete hypocrite, because I can't make that stick when it comes to someone else.

And Jake's not the only one.  I don't understand why Tim doesn't go to the cemetery unless I prompt it.  It used to hurt me deeply that Cory's biological father didn't post pictures and memories of her often on Facebook.  To me, it looked like his life just went on, with little interruption.  To this day, I don't know if he's been to her grave, at all.  One of Cory's cousins hasn't been either, to my knowledge, and it remains a steady, raw ache.  See her.  Acknowledge her.  

Like it or not, the way our culture handles grief has shaped my views.  I fight many of them, but some remain. Pay your respects.

But is that any better than the "be strong", "move on", "stoic in public, crying is for private" crap I abhor?

I don't like it, and I will always be hurt for her- when people don't speak of her, show outward signs of their grief, show up to her grave,,, but it's really not my place to dictate.  How would I like it if someone told me I had to go to the cemetery every day or else that meant I didn't love her?  I held myself steady to that expectation for months after the accident and it nearly burnt me out.  When the crisis worker told me that I should stop going so often, that it meant nothing about my love for her or my ability to mother, that was freeing.  Going there every day to her final resting place would surely have driven me to suicide years ago.

For me, I hate going to the cemetery, but I could never not go.  There is an undeniable pull to visit the place where her precious bones lay.  There is little comfort in running my hands over the letters of her name, in letting my tears wet the grass above where she lies, in kissing her monument when I leave-it will never measure to kissing her face, not even the cold marble it had become the last time I saw her -, but all the same, I couldn't imagine not doing those things.

But maybe Jacob can't imagine being asked about his sister in math class and having to trot out the horrific story, becoming teary and vulnerable in front of  his peers.  That doesn't mean he doesn't love her and miss her deeply.  The bracelet?  It's a lovely gesture, and it makes my heart smile every time I see someone wearing one.  But Jacob?  He has nothing to prove.