8-24-12

Yesterday sucked… sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked. It sucked.

I remember getting in trouble for that word. There are probably quite a few who still find it offensive but there is no other word. It sucked.

I had spent the better part of the month in the sick black waste of dread. Like a prisoner sitting in a cell, locked in fetters waiting for the upcoming date of execution. Only I don’t get to die. I just have to do it all over again… in October, in November, oh God… in December. You get the picture.

We released balloons in the morning before Isaiah went to school. As I watched them catch the swirling upper air and weave around each other the tears started. They washed hot down my face most of the walk to Isaiah’s school but they were nothing compared to what was to come.

I haven’t sobbed for that many hours in a row in months. I haven’t screamed and clawed and choked on my own spit in a long time. Tears puddled on my lap as Will and I sat huddled on the couch watching Damon dance on the computer screen, watching him coo and smile as an infant. Watching all that we have left of my precious child.

I scrawled his name, as big as I could write it, on or front sidewalk. Next to it I wrote his birthdate. We looked at the few pages of his scrapbook I’ve managed to complete. I didn’t even make it past the hospital before I got to damn busy. We saw me standing there in my gown, big as a house. We read the letters we wrote to him. Letters meant for him to read as he grew, to know the story of his birth, to know how much he was treasured. We saw the pictures of our newborn son…  I am sick with pain.

A friend sent us a package just after Damon’s death. I don’t remember exactly when it arrived… days are still a muddle and that time is just an ocean of nothing and everything. Inside the package was an acorn, a pot, soil and directions for planting the little seed that will one day become an oak. We planted it. I don’t remember the planting but I remember the feeling. It has grown since then, sitting next to the kitchen sink by a little window. According to the instructions about this time it should be planted in the ground. We rent our house. We are not leaving that tree.

So yesterday we went and bought an enormous barrel style pot and bags and bags of potting soil. I actually read the directions for planting a tree printed on the bags. Anyone who knows me well knows that is unusual. I never have the patience to read directions… are you serious? That’s what the pictures are for. I read the directions.

We reverently repotted our little tree. It now stands a little sprig of green in an ocean of brown soil, next to our dining room table. I love that little tree. We put Damon’s orange pinwheel in the soil next to the tree. He used to run back and forth between us beckoning us to blow so the wheel would spin. Often one of us didn’t get it spinning fast enough for his liking so he was off to the other parent with impatience. I miss him.

We ate his favorite foods for dinner. Hamburger helper lasagna, oreos, pretzels, popcorn, and cheetos. Will carved a ‘birthday cake’ out of watermelon, honeydew and cantaloupe topped with grapes (the first solid food Damon would eat). “It’s an unconventional cake because it’s an unconventional birthday” Will said, “there has to be a cake.”

Isaiah wanted to sing happy birthday and couldn’t understand why all our friends weren’t over to celebrate. He wanted a party and this tearful, somber meal was not up to his expectations. It’s hard to be a parent when you’ve got nothing inside… or maybe nothing would be better.

  

We did it all… what else is there to do on a day that should have been a celebration. Nothing is right, nothing is good but you can’t do nothing. So, we did something. The something was painful and empty but we couldn’t do nothing.

We survived but it doesn’t feel like a good thing.

I thought maybe today would be better. We passed the first ginormous hurdle… It’s not better. Maybe at some point I will stop setting my hopes on some moment or event to bring relief. Relief never comes. As my sister in loss said this morning “We just keep lamenting… it’s all … all we have.”