Simple

I miss him.  All the time, every day.  It's just part of who I am now.  Missing Silas is what I do while I'm doing everything else.

Almost 2 years now and my grief has certainly changed in many ways, but there is a core aspect to it that has not transformed at all.  I have transformed around it, even though you'd have to look hard to see it.

I talk to lots of people all day between my two very social jobs and none of them would ever know or suspect the pain that lives in my heart all the time.  It almost makes me smile now, that pain.  It's my little secret with my little missing son.

I'm a father who doesn't have to do a thing, has no responsibilities, with no expectations and no chance to fuck anything up.  Or, at least, fuck up anything else.  Really wish he and I got off to a better start.  Instead here I am and there he isn't.  A nightmare fatherhood in a disaster of a life.

Yet somehow I manage to laugh these days.  Time is inexorable and all I can do is forge straight ahead and try to stay upright.  Without laughter, without humor, I would have given up long ago.  Laughter is one of the few things that pierces my persistent sadness.

Music;  Love;  Delicious food and drink;  The raw beauty of the world around me;  The faces of my friends and family;  Silence in the night when I'm on the couch with a book I cannot put down; Lu's lips on mine.  Sadness succumbs to all of these, for a time.

I miss him and I'm trying hard not to miss life itself.

I'm sure you all feel like this:

There is no one else in the world like me.  And you're right.  The unique razor edges of your grief is like a deadly snowflake, the peaks and valleys of your emotions your own personal fingerprint of doom.  We are each alone in the ongoing experience of our individual losses and it is easy to feel so vastly different than everyone else when everyone else around us has no idea how deep this pain goes.

Or maybe they do, I sometimes remind myself.  Everyone has their own story, their own pain, their own raging lament at the injustice of life.  Maybe they are hiding just as much anguish, just in different sector of their soul.  The litany of disaster is easy to recite and difficult to deny, for any of us.

Every day is denial here.  Denial of depression.  Denial of apathy.  Denial of how easy it would be to just give up and lay down and never get up again.  It doesn't feel possible, that we can keep going even though we are getting smacked down month after month after month but yet here I am, not giving up.

There is a strange sort of inevitability to behaving like this, for me.  I don't really feel like giving up is even a choice.  It just seems so... boring and listless.  I don't think I could stand it, just sitting around with my given-up self all the time.  I already know what a complete jackass that version of myself is, and I couldn't bear to spend any amount of time with me behaving like that.

Besides, I've been all the way to the bottom and it's a scary fucking place.  Walls, floors, windows, faces, food, sounds, scents, they all stopped making any sense at all and I could feel the ease of oblivion close by.  I still don't quite understand how my body managed to function in those first days after he died.  I shouldn't have been able to swallow or breathe.  I shouldn't have been able do anything at all and yet, still, again, somehow, here I am with a little smile on my face confessing to the fact that I can go on living even though my son is dead.

It shouldn't be possible in so many ways, but the simple fact of his death is a proof of the geometry of life.  It is something that is absolutely true in a world that is filled with gray areas and half-lies.  There's no way to hide from it.  No way to reason with it.  No way to change it or fix it or alter it in any way.  It is simple.  It is final.  It is true.  He's dead.  I'm alive.  And now I get to spend the rest of my time here trying to reconcile those 2 truths even though they are perpendicular lines --true forms-- that intersected once and never will again.  Or at least, not in this world.

Part of me went with him.  Part of him stayed with me.  Now it is an impenetrable nugget that lives inside me that is impossible to explain.  It is a single point of existence, a raw, elemental dot that is painful and compelling and beautiful and terrible.  His death is not just a moment, not just a period of time in my life, rather it is an ongoing experience that continues to alter my entire life and everyday experience.

Ah, sirens in the street, right outside the house just like that day when he died.  It is always that day, now, for a little while.  Then time pulls me forward and I miss him and I miss who I could have been and the only way out is to push all of that back inside me.  I push it back into a single, simple point of truth and loss.  Then I focus directly on right now, right in front of me, whatever it is that has to happen next.  I will do it because doing nothing is worse than anything.  Doing nothing is too simple.  Doing nothing is a denial of his life, as brief and unfulfilled as it was.

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

Do you still have a sense of humor?  What makes you laugh?  What do you do to stay upright?  What are the simple truths that you hold on to?

Comments

[Michelle]

Life goes on - and it sucks.

[moops]

"I'm a father who doesn't have to do a thing, has no responsibilities, with no expectations and no chance to fuck anything up. Or, at least, fuck up anything else. Really wish he and I got off to a better start. Instead here I am and there he isn't."

So eloquently said.

That's really where I'm at, these days.. thankfully, mostly with acceptance. It is what it is - and though, by many measures, you could certainly argue that it hasn't gone well - I'm still the better for it, and 'happier' for having known him.

[Catherine]

I literally exhaled when I read this post. Thank you for putting it into words so that I could nod my head and breathe again.

The funny thing is...I laugh MORE easily now. I find humor everywhere...appropriate or not. I relish my morning coffee more. I slow down and take my time where I was so rushed before. Nobody gets points for doing more, seeing more, BEING more when they die. It's always the same whether you've lived ninety years or 35 weeks in your mother's belly. Somebody will mourn me and then they will move on. Maybe, if I'm lucky, there will be a plaque somewhere with my name on it. But beyond that, my life has to be lived for me and I can't let fear or sadness steal it from me.

[Heather]

You wrote what I can't manage to put into words. Thank you.

[Lani]

"His death is not just a moment, not just a period of time in my life, rather it is an ongoing experience that continues to alter my entire life and everyday experience."

well said Chris. This post was beautiful. Thank you for sharing your amazing thoughts with all of us in the community. I am lucky to have you as my partner in this journey.

xo

[Steph]

I simply must echo this again:

"His death is not just a moment, not just a period of time in my life, rather it is an ongoing experience that continues to alter my entire life and everyday experience."

That is what people who have never gone through this don't comprehend. This isn't just something that happens that you get over. It colors the rest of your life.

I do still laugh. I do still find humor in life. I have that feeling: "If I don't laugh, I'll cry." So, when I can have some control over the choice, I choose laughter.

My simple truths? We're all going to die. I get this now. I ran from it before.

Also, whatever doesn't kill us, makes us stronger. I hate that this ever had to happen but, yes, I recognize now that I (and my husband and I) are stronger than I could have imagined.

[Matthew]

This is so Incredibly true. I have to hold back the emotions of my own when I read this just because you are right, as mad as things are for our unique set of circumstances that feel hellish, people you love and care about have their own too, and you would be amazed at the help they can give even when you feel so alien and otherwise unhelpable. Thank you for this.

[danielle]

This is it, Chris. Exactly, perfectly, terribly it. I was nodding along the whole time.

At first when I would laugh it would be the kind of laughter that was a half step from hysteria. Now there are things I find genuinely funny- not often and not with the same abandon that I used to, but there is humor in the world. Sometimes, some of it even comes out of me.

My simple truth? Who you have around you matters. Not much else does.

[eliza]

Chris, this is beautiful. Perfect. This is one where I was nodding, almost frantically, as I read; I said aloud "Yes, exactly, that's it. That's how I've been feeling."

The same sentence that's been quoted grabbed me as well. That is precisely how it is - ongoing, still shaping me.

Yes, my sense of humor is still intact. My husband was trying to get me to laugh within days of Gabe's death. I was afraid to, and ashamed, until he said that it was one of the things that could make things easier for him - if I could laugh, I would be ok eventually. And if he could make me laugh, he knew he would be too.

Staying upright isn't so hard anymore. If I was going to die, it would have been then. I wanted to. Living with this was too big, too much. But I did, and now . . . I miss him. But it would be a disservice to his short life to waste mine. So I try. Mostly succeed. Sometimes better than others. I also acknowledge the bad days and the pain and don't will it away or ignore it. It's a part of this, and the sharpness brings the happier things into focus.

My simple truth: Life goes on - never as before. But it continues, and is a beautiful, terrible thing.

[Emily]

My truth is what you said. That part of me went with him and that part of him stayed with me. I am not the same as before...but I am not worse off either. I'd like to think he has and will continue to better me. Just as if he hadn't died.

[Sally]

I still laugh, and I still smile, but it is not as true as it once was. Simon and I can still make each other lose the plot with laughter, but after each fit of hysteria has passed, I often think of her and think about just how hard it can be to laugh, smile and be happy when she's not here.

I also got stuck on the same line Lani did in this post:

"His death is not just a moment, not just a period of time in my life, rather it is an ongoing experience that continues to alter my entire life and everyday experience."

This is exactly the same way it is for me, but most in my life probably don't realise it.

This post really stopped me in my tracks, Chris. I have been trying for a whole day to think of the right words to say but I know there are none.

You're never far from my thoughts.

Holding on to the simple truth that we can survive this. We are surviving this.

[Skytimes]

I wrote my comment before reading the others and noticed loads have been struck by the same... "his death an ongoing process that alters every day" sentence. And considering I couldn't say it as eloquently, I deleted it all and just say: Word.

My sons death has changed me just as much as if he'd have lived. I hold on simply to the fact that I was able to survive this. A "If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere", kind of thing. And without humor and laughter, I'd have given up long ago too. At the beginning it sounded false, empty and hollow but got easier by the day. When your skin is too thin for your own good, it's better to laugh about something...

Thanks for this post... it's one of those I'll read over and over.

[Anon]

"Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart
don't know how to laugh either."
- Golda Meir

[Angie]

Beautiful post, Chris. Eloquent and poignant as always. Thank you. I think those last lines define why I write about Lucy, and keep writing about her, and paint about her, and craft about her, and host websites about her these days--"I will do it because doing nothing is worse than anything. Doing nothing is too simple. Doing nothing is a denial of his life, as brief and unfulfilled as it was."

I think I have a sense of humor--black and twisted now, but hopefully it is still there. I laugh an awful lot, even as I grouse. I think for me my simple truth is that art and writing make me feel whole. And I feel myself drawn to those who can sit with death, or have a dark streak of torment and depression, anxiety and wisdom, or addiction and recovery, because I cannot handle the perpetually optimistic happy joyjoy people for whom I have become an exception to the goodness of life.

[Ezra's Mommy]

Oh Chris...you've done it again... written a post that literally takes my breath away. I've been thinking a lot about this very point lately, the sadness that lives in me each day our Ezra isn't here. The joy has come back, and yes I laugh, but that sadness is ever-present.

[B]

my simple truth is that our first baby died, and that D will never believe that.

i hate the contradiction but have to live with it. in much the same way he has to live with the fact that this loss has broken me, and that he doesn't understand.

it sucks, like michelle says.

[Hannah]

"It is always that day, now, for a little while. Then time pulls me forward and I miss him and I miss who I could have been and the only way out is to push all of that back inside me. I push it back into a single, simple point of truth and loss. Then I focus directly on right now, right in front of me, whatever it is that has to happen next."

Yes, exactly. There were lots of comforting "truths" which no longer work for me, but the one that is less comforting but more true is the one you've redirected yourself to in the passage above - you are here now. It's like one of those helpful little red arrows on a map - "you are here". It is never enough for me, but at least it is true. And you are right - to honour those too-short moments that our babies lived, we need to honour the brand new moments which are constantly appearing in front of us.

I do laugh. It is a different, slightly more maniacal laugh than before, but I grab those moments when I can. What makes me laugh? All the usual things, but more black humour than before. Especially people who have been through enough that they can't be bothered pretending and can just lay it out in all its ridiculous glory.

[mirne]

It is simple. I miss them all. All three of them. I'm a mother of three children, yet I have no responsibilities. I just have memories. I miss them so much, it hurts.

[eliza]

Chris, you wrote this over a year ago, and I just passed our own 2-year anniversary, and this pulls me and I still nod along frantically as I did when I read it a year ago.

You explain it so beautifully, the grief that still exists, the new form of it, the reconciliation I try daily.

Beautiful.