good

This morning I’m running like a well oiled machine, breakfast, big boy dropped off at school (with his lunch, jacket, and homework), grocery store run with no meltdowns, and the rainbow baby is peacefully napping in his crib. I’m not exaggerating when I say this is the first time since Damon died that I’ve felt like I’m on top of things.

The weather has finally turned which means this thermophile is driving with the windows down and the radio up. After a loooong month of waiting we assembled the eldest’s new basketball goal and a gaggle of little boys ping ponged between the trampoline and the driveway all day yesterday. I’m riding high on feeling good for more than a few hours in a row. It’s a new good. It’s not the care-free all is right with the world good of those whose hearts are intact. It’s a good weaved through with pain and missing, those ever-present truths, but it’s good.

And the best of the good, better than the good weather, better than a peacefully sleeping baby, better than a day of simply silliness? We go the rainbow baby’s immunocompetency blood work back. His immune system is perfect. We found out last week. It’s only just now sinking it. His immune system is perfect, PERFECT. I wish I could describe the feeling in my chest. Imagine the most relieved and excited you’ve ever been, maybe it’s a little like that.

It’s a huge relief, knowing that his body can defend itself but still find myself counting the months. It’s entirely irrational but I feel like I’m waiting for the day he reaches 20 months to believe he’s going to be ok. Last night as we played in the bath I thought “You’re nine months old. Do I only have ten months left?” I resist planning things for him. I wont buy clothes for when he’s older, bigger. He’s three months from his first birthday but I refuse to plan anything. Plans are scary, life is scary, the future is scary. What if he doesn’t make it?

But for now the littlest beckons and I plan to learn to accept this new good in my life.

Until next time…

Today is a crying day

It’s a crying day. It’s been a long time since I cried.

My man is home today so the plan was for me to catch a yoga class then spend the interviewing time cranking out as much reading as possible before I picked up my eldest. I’m back in school and life has kicked into double high gear. There’s no time, ever, for anything… including grief.

It’s weird to think about the fact that you have to make time to grieve. It takes time and energy, lots of it. If you don’t make time it will creep up behind you with its sticky black hands and you end up sobbing in a coffee shop parking lot where you’re supposed to be studying. It will not be denied. Either you grieve on your terms you you grieve on its terms but grieve you will, always.

When the pain stuck in my throat I text a friend, a friend who cries out the name of her child every day, a friend who knows. I reached for her like a life-line. “Are we seriously supposed to do this for years and years!?” she responded. I can count on her to just say this is bull-***t, not to try and encourage me, not to try to put a band-aid over the gaping Damon-shaped hole.

People are so deep in denial about pain, about death, about suffering that truth makes them unaccountably uncomfortable. She mentions a conversation she had about cancer statistics “The death rate is 100%. I will die, you will die, my daughter died.” The woman looked at her as if she had seen a ghost.

I’ve said it before but life after Damon’s death is like waking up from the Matrix… knowing how black the world really is and not being able to convince anyone that what they are seeing isn’t real, standing outside of everything, alone, excluded. Caught between a desperate desire to die and the desire to cling to life.

Today is a crying day. I miss him so much I can’t breathe. Walking through life is so weird. I put one foot in front of the other, just like everyone else. I love my children and my husband, just like everyone else. I study. I work. I even laugh but I’m not just like everyone else.

Today is a crying day. Damon Ray, you forever have my heart. I never forget. I’m never ever not missing you. I’m never ever not thinking of you. My precious baby boy. Today is a crying day…

Until next time…