drunk

photo by ldandersen.

I pull the darkness up to my chin, and curl my knees up under her. The alcohol is a nice way to turn off the refrain. My eyes force themselves closed in spite of the insomnia that has plagued me all my life. I am a lump of unconscious. No dreams. No waking. No dead daughter. Just the mind switched off.  

In my most raw moments, in the early days after Lucy died, I made some very lucid decisions. One was to not drink for a few weeks. I thought booze would tear me open, dump my necrotic organs onto the floor in front of me. Liquor will only make me cry more, I reckoned. It might even make me suicidal. Maybe I will scare my daughter when I am drunk and full of grief, guilt and self-hatred. Maybe there was a demon in the bottle which would possess me and make me more sad than I could possibly imagine. I would be swallowed whole by bourbon, that is what I thought.

The alcohol would not have made it to my brain, I suspect now. It would have kept working on the large, pulsating hole right through the center of my abdomen. It would have been covering it over and over, dulling it slightly, but never leaving it alone. And I probably wouldn't have noticed the drunk.  Still, there was a healthy fear of the unknown--grief drinking seemed dangerous to me.

I started drinking again because I figured it couldn't hurt anymore. I was nigh-suicidal, my organs were on the floor anyway, and it ached more than I could imagine. The wine slipped over me, like an old comfortable lover who knew just where to kiss me every time. I felt normal, like a normal person, not a grieving mother. Just a person enjoying a glass or five of wine with some dinner. Drinking has always been a kind companion for me, not something that drove me into a depression or into psychosis, rather like an old friend, a confessor, listening to my self-pitying ramblings over a glass. We would laugh, sometimes cry. I felt better just having the booze near me.

A glass turned into a bottle. And when it took over my nights, I stopped, because I wanted to get pregnant. And then I was pregnant and absolutely did not drink. But every day I thought, "This pregnancy might be fucking manageable if I could have a bourbon." I would mention nearly every time I was at my midwife. "I could really use a bourbon, Pam." And she would laugh, and I would look at her. "No, I'm serious."

A pregnant dry drunk may be the curse Dionysus unleashes upon humanity. I was a miserable, unpleasant person to be around or know. I embodied anxiety and misplaced anger. I was not the pregnant person that people would approach, hands outstretched headed towards my expanding belly, with the question, "Is this your first?" No, I would stare at people with a thousand dagger stare, "Touch me and I cut you, bitch."

Then Thomas Harry was born. Whew, glad I was done with all that nastiness. I was out of the woods. Everything was happy. Here is a new cute, adorable baby who doesn't cry very much and sleeps great. My life felt pretty complete. My grief, while not absent, felt under control.

"Let's toast," I said. "Let's toast to our good fortune."

I felt like my grief was under control. I felt like my drinking was in my control. And now, I am trying to get sober.

+++

People drink for many reasons. I drank because my kid died and I deserved a fucking drink. I drank because I couldn't sleep. I drank because I like the taste of wine and bourbon and beer and vodka and any other drink with a proof level. I drank because I was sad. I drank because I was happy. I realized, not that long ago, that I really only drink for one reason--because I am an alcoholic.

Drinking problems are usually measured in quantities and horror stories. I know that there is a blackout-drunk-lose-everything bottom for a lot of people.

I am not that person.

I have children. I have a husband I love. I have a life I love. I have lost nothing material. What I lost was any respect I had for myself. I lost peace. I lost contentedness. I lost feeling well. I lost restfulness. I lost hope. I raised my bottom up to a place that was low enough for me. As a mother, I often relegated those things to some day. Some day, I will sleep. Some day, I will take care of my drinking. Some day, I will be happy.

My husband didn't even realize that I drank at night after the kids went to sleep. I have never driven drunk. I have never missed a bill, or woken up to a drink. My kids have never seen me drunk. When I drink, I write.

I shut the door of my office and fall into a world of 75 words per minute. I edit. I paint. I create an alternate reality where Grief and Bourbon are my muses. But I was still miserable. After waking in the morning, cotton mouth, cloudy with a dull headache, I vowed not to drink that night. By 8 pm, I was talking myself into one glass of wine. Just one glass. After one glass of wine, or one bourbon, or one beer, all bets were off. My resolve was gone. I maybe had two more, or four more, or maybe more. I called a hotline one day.

 "I don't know if I have a problem."

"Did you answer the questions on our website?"

"Yes. I think I got an A."

"Ha, yes, I got an A too."

"I used to drink more when I was single. I haven't even been drinking for more than three months. I am not anywhere close to a rock bottom," I tell the woman on the phone.

"You are at enough of a bottom to think you have a problem. And besides, bottoms always have trap doors," she says to me.

"But I don't drink very much on the average, and I am very good at quitting. I am just not any good at staying sober."

"But staying sober is the important part to you, right?"

"Yeah."

"How do you feel when you drink?"

"Ashamed. Pathetic. Weak."

"Pay attention to that."

+++

It has been a seventy days without a drink. I am happier than I have been in years. With Lucy in my belly, I remember saying that I wouldn't drink after she was born. I didn't realize I was a drunk, then, but my brain made some feeble connection that when I drank, I felt bad about myself. Then she died. And stopping drinking was the last thing I thought would help me.

Someone told me recently that Lucy's gift to our family was my sobriety and that I would never have gotten sober if she had lived. That is true. Drinking after Lucy's death immediately was not fun. It was like medication to keep me normal. Or rather the social lubricant I needed to be alone with me.

I thought I was smarter than being an alcoholic. I thought I could outsmart my family's legacy of booze and drunks. What I learned is that the arrogance of thinking that way prevented me from getting healthy. My arrogance prevented me from calling people at my most desperate hour to say, "I need a friend to talk to. I need a friend because my daughter died. I need a friend because I think I am drinking too much." It seemed easier to get drunk, and in fact, it was easier to get drunk, but it wasn't healthier or smarter.

Alcoholism is a progressive, fatal disease. When I began drinking, after my one year old son was born, I didn't immediately drink to drunk. In fact, the last few months of my active drinking, I can't remember feeling drunk ever, even when I would stare at the evidence of having drunk a bottle of wine. I would stare at the empty bottles of liquor clogging my recycling bin, and think, "Next week, this will be filled with Pellegrino bottles. Next week." But it never was. Drinking felt like a choice. It felt like I was handling the bourbon, except that when I tried to quit, I would drink again. I was sober for two days, I would reward myself with twice as much Maker's Mark on the rocks, and drink myself tired again. I didn't know, until I began reading about alcoholism, that this is a pattern for alcoholism.

Despite the fact that I am strong-willed enough to make outrageous goals and challenges (riding one hundred mile bike rides, writing a novel in a month, or posting a piece of art every day on a website) and meet them, I thought drinking was a weakness of mine, and that I was simply a weak-willed person. Looking at alcoholism as a disease has helped me be more compassionate. The moral defect here is simply not seeking help earlier. Some people describe alcoholism as an allergy to alcohol, because alcohol in an alcoholic creates a series of undeniable reactions--I can't say no to another drink once I have had one. If you ate a strawberry and your throat closed, you would not call yourself weak for your bodily reaction. What I have control over is whether or not I eat the strawberry at all.

I used to think that for me quitting drinking was like someone telling me to lose weight by cutting off my left leg. I mean, sure I would lose weight without the leg, but everything would else would be near impossible. I always wanted to be spiritually/mentally/physically well AND have drinking. That is simply not possible for me. And these days of sobriety, I also had to seriously think about why I would look at drinking as my left leg.

Right now, I feel like all the skin has been peeled from my body. I feel as raw as the early days after Lucy's death. And I am scared as hell. It's not that I can't do this, it's that I can.  And now I have to feel the weight of Lucy's death and of my losses without numbing it with alcohol. I am wrestling with losing my medication, my best friend, my confidante, my muse, my partner, my inspiration, my wubby, my safety net, my identity, and my number one enemy. But one thing is absolutely clear, the shame of drinking, the self-abuse I engaged in over every drop of alcohol I took in, that feels lifted. I feel a freedom and a lightness in this place of absolute vulnerability, and that is addictive too.

Due to the nature of this post, please feel free to utilize posting anonymously. What is your relationship with drinking like? Have you sought to numb your grief with alcohol or drugs? Have your habits gotten worse or better since your loss?



cyber love

My cell phone rings, and I see it is my friend calling. I don’t answer. I heed the voice in my head saying, she won’t say what you want her to say. I leave the phone alone.

It is February 28th, my baby’s birthday and death-day, and a stillness has descended on our house. Outside a cold rain falls from the sky and freezes as it hits the ground. Brian and I sit on the futon in his office with blankets, mugs of tea, and laptops. All day he stokes the fire in the woodstove. We listen to the crackle of burning bark without speaking.  We keep the lights low. Now and then I look out at the branches of our maple tree, steadily being encased in ice.

All day I sit, working a little, reading a little. Meanwhile, my laptop stays open to Fa.cebo.ok and email, and the cyber condolence flows in. A hug sent here, a love note there. All day, my baby is being remembered someplace on the globe.

I get only a few condolence calls. This is okay, because my heart is so full that I can barely speak. I let them go to voicemail. When the call comes from my friend, for a moment I consider answering.  Did she remember?

No, she did not. On my voicemail she leaves a sixty second rant about delayed flights and the price of gasoline. That’s all. Everything she didn’t say adds to the silence in my house.

* * * * *

The nature of my friendships has changed. Wasn’t there some celebrity in the 1980s who survived a plane crash, and then left her husband for a man who was in the same plane crash? I feel like her sometimes -  like you can only really get me if you were on the plane too.

But I haven’t cut anyone out of my life.  I have become an enigma to those “before” friends. They have unknowingly inflicted wounds, yet I still need them badly. Sometimes I need a time-out from grief, and a friend who’s never been to the dark side of the moon – plus a martini – can be just the ticket. My “before” friends link me to the “before” me— a self that I once knew and liked but can no longer access. I might need her someday, and they carry memories of her.

But this one friend – I can’t compartmentalize her. I’ve tried limiting our interaction to occasional social outings. But she is accustomed to our friendship running deeper than that. She probes and wants to know how I’m really doing. So I tell her, and she can’t change the subject, or clear the room, fast enough. I fall for it every time, because I believe that she is better than this. For two years I have been throwing my heart into her path, only to watch her casually step around it.

photo by youngthousands

If only she would say my baby’s name just once.

If only she would not complain to me about how hard it is to raise her daughter, born alive five weeks before mine.

If only she did not wonder how the holidays could be hard for me, since they are so fun for her.

If only she would tear up a little about my loss, the way she does at those TLC shows about moms who give their babies up for adoption.

If only she did not think of my loss as a health problem.

If only she believed my baby were real.

* * * * *

If only she were on Fa.cebo.ok.

Thinking of you.

(((hugs)))

remembering your baby

xoxo

So simple. So easy. That very tiny bit of love, sent regularly by keyboard, lets me know that my friends care, even if they don’t completely understand. It soothes my beastly bitterness at how the world slights this type of loss. Fa.cebo.ok, of all things, has saved some real friendships, by helping me let people off the hook for not being better at this. (Not you, Dad. If you are my parent, Fa.cebo.oking me on the baby’s birthday does not count.)

Maybe if this friend were on Fa.cebo.ok, she would say those needed little things on cue. Maybe she would see what other humans post to me, and a lightbulb would go on. Oh, that’s what I’m supposed to say!

But that’s a fantasy. Cyber love can’t save this friendship. I’ve gotten myself into a tug of war with someone who doesn’t even know she’s holding the other end of the rope. She can’t imagine the sacred stillness of a house on a dead baby’s birthday – she can’t feel what I’m feeling, even a little bit. The only thing left is for me to drop my end of the rope and walk away.

* * * * * *

How’s it going with your friends from before your loss? Is there anything you wish they would say that they haven’t? How do you handle friends who have hurt or abandoned you during this time? What role does the internet play in your friendships these days?

gone

We'll, I've just about done it.  Seems it has been my goal all along without even realizing it, but now it is as clear as day.

I've been trying to disappear completely and I'm almost there.

Since Silas passed away I've been step by step letting go of everything that can't help me.  Friends that can't handle my sadness, gone.  My previous car: rear-ended while I was not in it, and then subsequently totaled by the insurance company.  The future I expected as Lu grew grew and grew, utterly and completely altered, that specific path annihilated forever.  Even money itself.  We've never had much and I've worked hard to not focus on money as a source of completion and happiness.  Instead I've tried to just put my head down and work, roast coffee, get new customers, and just do everything as best I can, figuring the money will follow if we just stay true to our core values.  It's worked and we're growing as a business, but the bills always pile up.  In my mind, though, they are gone, immaterial, unimportant.

I've got creditors coming after me, but there's nothing for them to get.  We rent.  My most valuable possessions are my wedding ring & my Droid.  My brother in IT gave me the laptop I'm typing on right now.  My father got the loan for the used car I drive, and I pay him back month to month.  And then last night I took the final step and inadvertently cut all remaining ties to regular-world-life by somehow leaving my car unlocked, and my wallet exposed within.

I'm still not quite sure how I was so completely careless when I am usually exactly the opposite, but there it wasn't this morning when I got in my (father's) car to drive to work.  I hardly ever have cash on me, but last night I did and now it's gone.  I intended to use it tomorrow to pay for the sperm-freeze which is one step of our 3rd IVF attempt, but I'll have to find another couple hundred bucks to make that happen.

Thankfully, one of the things I do still have is a great family so they are going to help, but at this point I think it's more that they have me than I have them.

No license.  No ATM card.  No insurance card.  I've never lost my wallet or had it stolen.  Not once in my 37 years.  I cannot believe I was so stupid to let that happen, but obviously it's not the first mistake I've ever made.  Not by a longshot.  And compared to what I have already lost in my life, a few hundred bucks is essentially absolutely nothing at all.

Perspective is everything, I guess.

My perspective is unlike anything I ever expected.  I'm through the looking glass here.  Everything is gone except the love of my wife, my friends and my family.  I am finally here, all the way through, all the way emptied of objects, of possessions, of expectations, perhaps even of hope.  But it's not even that I'm now hopeless, more that I am completely status quo.  I am now.  I am this.  I am here and alive and I won't ever let that go, but all the extra and all the bullshit and all the everything I can't control it's gone gone gone and that makes me feel good.

My slow coast to this rocky bottom took long enough, but I'm glad to finally touch the bedrock and feel its cool, impenetrable heft.  There's more that could be taken from me, it's true.  Loved ones, my life itself, the clothes on my back, shelter, food, but losing those would destroy me altogether.  The gone-ness I feel is really a slow choice I've made to only hold onto these essential elements.

In order to survive I must love and feel loved.  I must eat and drink and laugh and sleep and shit and piss and cry and breathe.  My heart must pump.  My eyes must look forward and my feet must move me forward to whatever comes next.  But money won't save me.  A bank account won't protect me from the ravages of life.  A flimsy piece of folded leather and an ID tucked within won't hold back the disintegrating Universe.  It's gone, anyway, all of it.

I'm unlabeled, untethered, unincorporated.  I lay on my back on the bedrock of the bottom and look up, far up at the distant sky and streaming clouds and it doesn't matter that I'm on top of a mountain of grief.  My eyes are still open, my heart still beats, my soul still rages with anger and love and anticipation and fear, and nothing can stop Time's hold on my life and the inexorable rise of tomorrow's Sun.  It'll happen even if I don't look at the clock, or at the watch I don't have.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What were some unexpected repercussions of the loss of your child?  What have you let go or held onto since their death?  Do you feel like you're at rock bottom?  What helps get you up?

food for thought

I remember at some early therapy session, back when I wondered how much of my fee was spent on tissue, that I started going through the list.  You know the list, the list of things that you lost in addition to your baby.  As if that wasn't enough, I also seemed to have misplaced joy, happiness, fun, the ability to communicate with others, a sex drive, a flying poo about my health and hygiene, and taste.

I lost my ability to taste.

"I lost my ability to see in color," admitted my therapist, referring to the period after her mother died.  "It was as if the world was black and white."

+++

I'm not sure when I became a foodie.  I think perhaps it was there, latent, with my careful reading of Bread and Jam for Francis and how I fantasized about elaborate and difficult lunches with doilies and salt and pepper shakers.  I lived on escargot when I went to France at age six.  I dreamed up elaborate picnics with mini quiches in High School.  I fell in love with a foodie, and we spent our Honeymoon at a cooking school in Italy.  We were the odd couple who rarely ate out, made almost everything from scratch, and relished trying new recipes.  When we moved into our new house, in our new city, we were so relieved to finally be in a place where people knew and loved their food.  We started a raging debate in the cell phone store on our third day here when we casually asked where to get the best . . . I honestly can't remember what we asked about. But everyone in the store had an opinion.  We felt as if we were in heaven.

I'm not sure when it hit me, that food was sawdust.  The first few weeks after Maddy died I lived solely on food that people brought over:  cookies for breakfast and lunch, and then I'd pick a bit at a well-intentioned dinner, announce that I was tired and going to bed, and retreat upstairs to cry.  After the gifted food and the freezer stash ran out, I segued into cereal.  That's it, cereal.  I honestly can't remember what I fed Bella or what she would have been eating at that  point in time -- I'm guessing a slew of frozen chicken nuggets and mac&cheez.  My favorite bourbon barbecued chicken may as well have been a soggy bowl of bran.  Everything tasted like cardboard.  

The only thing I could barely perceive was coffee.  I'm not sure if it was the taste or smell per se, maybe just the jolt of caffeine or now that I think about it, the mere act of normal routine and comfort of holding a warm mug .  There were months where the only thing making it possible to swing my feet off the bed and onto the floor was the thought of making coffee.  I drank a lot of it.  I figured it was better than other things I could be drinking.  At some point I realized this probably wasn't the greatest thing I could be doing for myself and decided that in between cups, I needed to drink three glasses of water (and say three hail Marys).  It's a small measure of guilt I carry with me to this day, even though I never make it beyond two.

We didn't eat out.  Not because I didn't want to, or we couldn't, but because I didn't want to waste money on food I wouldn't enjoy.  It's not that I stopped eating, it's that grief masked flavor and thereby erased one of my greatest joys.  My great grandmother lived to be 100, and became extremely depressed right before her death because she lost the ability to taste her food.  I got where she was coming from.

"I remember the day, very vividly," said my therapist, "when I realized I could see colors again."

I'm not sure there was a day, a hammer on the head, or a gelato I could point to, but there was a slow creep.  And a year and four months after Maddy died, a friend took my husband and I out to dinner at a very good restaurant and I realized through the multiple courses and accompanying wine that I could taste again.  I could discern the nuances in the wine, I could decode a sauce. I could enjoy a dish simply sitting over it and inhaling the aroma without even taking a bite.  

I could experience food for the first time in over a year.  It was as if someone colorized the black and white movie my taste-buds had been living in.  Lettuce became green, capers became salty, coffee became lovely. 

Appreciating food again wasn't the pinnacle of recovery by any stretch of the imagination; I still wasn't getting the whole Joy thing.  But it helped considerably to know that grief hadn't completely eradicated something I loved so much, because losing my daughter was miserable enough.

What -- if anything  -- did you lose in addition to your child(ren)?  Have you found it again?

Correspondence

Back in your former life -- remember that? -- I bet this happened:  someone came to you with a problem,  or maybe you had one of your own that you dumped on someone else.  "Write a letter!" was the agreed upon solution, followed quickly by "but write a practice one first, you know, where you get it all out."

"But don't send that one."

And sometimes, just in the getting out, you find you don't need to send the letter after all.

Dear [Family member],

You have got to be the most self-centered, cold-hearted human being I have possibly ever encountered.  Who on earth could take a child's death -- someone else's child's death, I guess I should clarify -- and turn it into your own problem?  The gist of your martyrdom? Let me speak loudly so you might hear me:  It's not about you.  Check your shit at the door and support me in my grief, or just get the hell out and shut the fuck up.

/delete

It seems, unfortunately, that circumstances like ours lend themselves to a lot of letter writing.  Letters to doctors and lawyers and shrinks and RE's.  Letters to insensitive coworkers, bosses who just don't get it, friends who crawl away, neighbors who feign interest and do so poorly.  Letters to family -- especially the in-laws, to spouses, and even to dead children.  

Dear [Dr. X],

You know the day after my daughter died when you called to say how sorry you were and check on me?  That was really nice.  You know how you said "it was for the best?"  I agreed with you, because honestly I thought so too.  However, on further reflection, I don't think other people get to say that particular line in lieu of the grieving parent.  I think only parents get the right to say that, and frankly, we also have the right to change our minds about whether it really was for the best as much as we damn well please.  

(There's a lot of swearing in my draft letters.)

I happen to think writing angry letters is rather cathartic.  I prefer anger over sadness, because I find it easier to channel anger and actually do something with it -- like write a scathing diatribe.  Unfortunately, I had little to be angry about when it came to the facts surrounding my daughter's death itself -- no one did anything wrong or missed anything or really treated me poorly.  I would've loved to have released some of my steam on some poor unsuspecting L&D nurse or office assistant.

Dear [office assistant],

For the love of Mike, never, ever, EVER, ask the patient checking in at their six-week post-partum visit if they brought the baby.  UNLESS YOU ARE REALLY FUCKING SURE THERE'S A BABY TO BRING.  Because someone, someday, just might whip out a little box of ashes out of their handbag and say, "Why yes!  Yes I did!"  Which is what I wish I could've done when you asked me this very question instead of breaking down into tears.

Instead, my rage as it were took shape against people who didn't let me grieve appropriately, or who dismissed my child's wee life.  And instead of writing them letters -- even ones I never sent -- I started a blog.  I guess I viewed the entries as letters to some reader in cyberspace who could tell me if I was letting too much slide, going a bit bezerk over something trivial, or if I should clean it up and really send it.

Dear [fellow pre-school parent]:

Please please do not corner me and then go on any more about death in children's books and "how hard" it is to read and how you edit out those parts when you read aloud and how in fact you whispered the whole conversation to me like you were talking about the Karma Sutra and not Barbar's mother.  FOR THE THIRD TIME.  Because you know what?  Death in fiction is a fucking walk in the park -- it's goddamn "Ten Little Ladybugs."  Try explaining to your three year old why her sister died.  Death isn't dirty or something you should tiptoe around, you moron.

/delete, she was so nice to me at the potluck.  Sigh.

So as it turns out, my husband got a letter.  And it's addressed to him, and ergo not mine to blog about, but he let me read it and it has a lot to do with me.  (Apparently they think I'm the problem.  Which, if you were familiar with the problem, would blow your mind because I honestly think I'm the last person involved in this mess.)  And my husband, somewhat humorously, suggested that perhaps *I* should be the one to break the ice here, that *I* should make a phone call, that *I* should write a letter.

Dear [person who cut us out of your life totally six months after Maddy died, because I guess that was long enough to deal with us being depressed],

There is so much in this convoluted, loaded letter I don't even know where to begin unpacking it --  perhaps you might want to pay someone to start unravelling some of these thoughts.  It's called therapy.  Anyway, let's start in the middle where you mention your kids and how wonderful they are, and how you're sure we'd really love them if we could be around them more.  And how that went on for a few sentences.  And how nowhere in this letter do you once -- once -- mention my children, living . . . or dead.  Especially dead.  In fact, Maddy is the reason this letter is being written in the first place, you'd probably agree, and she doesn't come up once.  Talk about an Inconvenient Truth. But why guilt us about your kids?  Do you not want to see ours?  Or is this some one-way street kinda deal where we're supposed to feel guilty for this chasm that you sorta brought on? Then there's "Is Tash mad at us?"  Which makes me actually laugh out loud, because I sure as shit am now.  Although I honestly wasn't and never have been -- we've been under the assumption here that y'all were mad at *us*.  But thanks for transposing your assumptions onto me, because a grieving mother is, after all, batshit cray-cray, and obviously mad at just about everyone.  So blame me, that's fine, whatever helps you sleep at night.  And that part about lamenting that you happened to be nearby one day and couldn't call . . . why?  Why not?  Why is it incumbent upon us to call you?  Why can't you break the awkward silence?

/save.  Still drafting.  Not enough profanity.  Will never ever send.  Sadly, I am not nearly that brave, so I passive-aggressively sent a holiday card without a personal note.  

You don't have to reveal the addressee, but can you share a few lines from your letters?  Are they still drafts or did you actually send them?  (Did you clean them up much before you did?)  Anyone out there you need to sit down and write to?

Coming up

As my very busy December freight-trained on, once in a while I would pause, briefly (very briefly), to note that this fourth time around it didn't seem bad. In fact, it seemed downright ordinary. The first snow didn't put me in the hole, the cold didn't chill beyond the bone. It was just winter, a season that I used to love, and that, it seemed, I could love again. As I did my little jig for being all kinds of functional, I did wonder, in that whispered way you sometimes wonder to yourself, whether it wasn't just because I was so busy. End of term is never a time for tea and scones (except if said scones are eaten out of a paper bag in the car as you drive from one place you had to be to the next... um, but if you find yourself in such a position in my city, I can tell you where to get the scones), but the end of your first semester of solo teaching? Definitely not. And yet, it seemed more than suppression. It really seamed my grief season hadn't started, as it had been doing, at the very cusp of the first winter month.

It's not that I wasn't missing A. I was. I am. All the time. It's just that I wasn't knocked back on my ass, the way I usually am this time of year. That is, until I was. New Year's Eve, the day that has been especially hard in past years, tapped me on the shoulder but otherwise kept its distance. And then January 2nd gut punched me, dropped me to the ground, and sat on top of me for a while, apparently thinking deep thoughts. "Four weeks and counting, beyotch," it said, strolling away.

It's grey out. That's more a statement of mood than of actual observation. These days when I venture outside and encounter sunshine, I am surprised. I shouldn't be-- it's winter, not polar twilight. In the meantime, things are happening, most of them even good. I have classes to teach for this semester, and even in the area that doesn't require a lot of prep, so there's hope for family time. Monkey is making progress in some important ways. The Cub is speaking, and turning out to have as wicked a sense of humor as we sort of expected based on his pantomime gags back from the mostly-nonverbal near past. And maybe that's what it's all about-- as always, as in the early days, time stands still for no-one. No matter how much I may want it to pause, to stay, to let me catch my breath, it marches on.

And then there are the new twists. Despite my own firm beliefs and repeated statements to the effect of grief being something that changes with us, something that doesn't really get that much better, but something that we can learn to live with better, despite all that once in a while I surprise myself when I realize that this, whatever this happens to be at the moment, this I did not expect. That is, I keep stepping on the same rake-- the one where it turns out that I do have expectations, even as I tell myself and the world that I do not.

This year, this seems to be the reading of tea-leaves that is momentary and fleeting imagining of what he would've been like now. That's not exactly it-- I can't imagine it, I know I can't. Because, and this thought is not in any way new either, that's what is particularly sucky about our kind of loss-- we know jack squat about these children of ours. But usually, and by that I mean vast majority of the time over the last almost 4 years, I haven't been able to or even tempted to go down that road. He's dead, you see, and so he can't be alive, and he can't be one, or two, or three.

But suddenly now, suddenly I am straining for a glimpse of what he could've been at four. I catch myself straining when the Cub is interacting with older boys, especially the youngest son of our friends, the kid who was supposed to be A's best friend. I catch myself straining when Monkey and the Cub are raising a ruckus inside or laughing like maniacs sledding down the little hill in front of our house. It's only for a second, less than that-- a fraction of a second. But it's there, and as I swat it away, I also wonder why now? Is it because the Cub is speaking? Is it because Monkey was four the year I was pregnant with A? I don't know. All I know is that this is new and newly painful. But also reassuring in that way where the hurt is too real for him to have been a dream.

I am also changing. On January 2nd, as I sat in front of my laptop with tears welling up for no particular reason, I chatted a friend to ask for help. This is not something I usually do, especially not something I do when the reason for needing help is grief. But I took a deep breath and jumped. Not today, I said, but sometime this month, can we have coffee? I am going to need some TLC. She's a good friend, and there's a coffee in my future. One I am looking forward to very much.

How far into this are you? How have your significant dates been for you so far? How have the periods coming up on these dates been? How has all of this changed for you with time? Are there new facets of grief that you are discovering? What are they?