the rides
Our choices, our perspectives, how we handle adversity or celebrate happiness, each instance of decision is another step forward through the twisting path of our treacherous lives.
I should be used to roller coaster by now. Yet, at the top of a long climb thrilled by the glorious view, I am terrified of the inevitable plunge I know is coming. When I'm way down low moving fast through a dark valley, I am content with the limited perspective and the absence of danger.
It's easier to get by when there is no place further to fall if things go completely off the rails.
I always hope there's a clicking chain ahead to pull me out of my spiral, but it's never a sure thing. Not anymore. I thought having Silas was simply another spin around that track, a life-long jaunt that would be scary and exhilarating in equal parts but still all above the ground, always showered in light.
Turns out this ride doesn't have safety harnesses or quality control inspectors to ensure anyone's soul exits fully intact. There is no promise of perfection. Turns out the free-fall is endless and that The Pit lives inside me, inside my guts, and that once the chain releases there is no stopping the plunge.
This ride is not made with any regard for tolerable human limits.
You don't have to be this tall or this smart or this good or this loving or this honest or this much in love to get crushed by the g-forces this Universe is capable of producing.
I thought I had been in tough spots before, where I was scared and alone and I could feel that weightless churn at the bottom of my belly. Getting bad news about my mother's health made me sick. A close call in the car with a tractor trailer late at night on an obsidian stretch of I95 left me shaken and empty more times than I care to remember.
But nothing prepared me for the depth of nausea--of soul-crushing terror and despair--that my son's death shotgunned into my guts. Now I know it, though, and I hate even the slightest inkling of that awfulness when I feel it starting to hollow me out from the intestines outward.
The rapid breath, the cold sweat, the sour stomach that feels larger than the World and impossible to contain within this measly little body, I feel it and know it and I have to use all of my will and brainpower and strength to stay calm and contained and get out, out, out of whatever awful situation I'm in, or to find a way around the terrible, insurmountable obstacle in front of me.
What I have also learned, though, is that my soul and intellect and heart are capable of withstanding far more than I could have ever imagined. I would rather still be an innocent but since that is not a choice, I'm glad to know I am made of some material that is ultimately impenetrable no matter how bad it gets.
It seems that I can withstand the crushing forces of gravity as I plunge to the bottom. Some sense I never knew I had can see through the dark to the love my friends and family radiate toward me. No matter how rattled this ride makes me, my spine is strong and true and I will never crack completely.
All of you have that in you, too.
If this journey ends up beautiful and good somehow, I will know it is because Silas was part of my life. Even only as potential, he has forged my will into something stronger than diamond, more flexible than grass, more clear of purpose and direction than a planet hurtling around a star.
I will feel that Pit grow to consume me again I am sure. I have felt it blossom in my innards many times since the day he died. When I miss him so much I can't breathe; when Lu is immobile with sadness; when the pressure of everything I can't control is more than I can hold; when someone I care about adds another human to this planet and I love them for it and hate that we don't have one of our own; each time I feel my soul in free-fall, within, all over again and again and again.
The Pit opens as I descend and I always just barely slip away to safety before I'm completely consumed.
I hope someday my soul surfs that Pit as my offspring drives away in their car for the first time. I hope I feel it on their first day of school. I hope I can keep getting showered with every rising sun and I hope that somehow my son knows how strong he has made me even though he is so far away, on some incomprehensible journey of his own. Maybe, hopefully, perhaps.
But here is all I can do. The Pit will always be near, but I can't live in fear. These are our lives together. I can't help but live as fully as I can and try to enjoy the view I have before I am forced to withstand the next round of cliffs and curves, safety bar or not.
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How much of that do you believe, too? How much sounds like so much bullshit? What do you tell yourself to hold yourself up? Does your life feel like a roller coaster or something else entirely?
8 Comments
Reader Comments (8)
We're holding you and Lani tight from afar as you ride your own roller coaster. I know it has been one hell of a ride for you both so far.
xo
The good days sometimes stretch to 2, 3, 4, 5 in a row, then I settle onto a comfortably numb space thinking, this is OK, I can handle being on the outside of my own grief looking in. Then BAM!...the fall hits, it hits hard and it fast. Fortunately it doesn't last as long as the 'highs' do. I don't know how I could sustain the lows for too long.
I tell myself I must keep moving, must get up (well my other 3 boys tell me that). I have to engage and hold onto them even tighter than I did before while also trying to maintain some sense of sanity and not let my fears take over that something will now happen to them too.
I love what you wrote about Silas turning your will into something stronger than diamond. I will take that on whenever I look at the ring on my finger and remind myself that I too am stronger than that. It's representative of my family, a stone for me and D, our 3 living boys, the centre stone for Joseph and the 7th stone for the other 2 little souls we lost early in pregnancy.
Thankyou for such a great post. It's JUST what I needed today. I wish my friends and family could all read this.
I miss the safety bar, but I think it might be easier for me to ride out the roller coaster moments - the sudden plunges and lifts and heart-in-my-throat moments - than to deal with the long, aching monotony of my son being dead, still, always. It doesn't change, no matter how much I want it to. And I still have trouble accepting it, still move more sluggishly than I want to through a lot of life. That makes it sound like I'm constantly sad, and I'm not. Much has gotten easier and more bearable, and my life is full of legitimately happy moments, but the part of grief I hate the most is the monotony of it.
My daughter Thisbe lived 41 hours and for the rest of my life, the ride will take me transcendentally high when I can somehow love her fully - no matter where she is - and furiously, dreadfully low into the bottomless hole of her absence. Both real, so real.
Someone suggested to me that experiencing "the worst" is proof that, having survived it, I really don't need to fear anything ever again. Nope, I can't take that bet (and had a lesser person said it to me...I might have tried to hurt them). Like you, I have to embrace what I can with all the courage I can scrape together at the moment, but the only thing that makes love and joy beautiful now is allowing myself to feel them while not letting myself forget the other side of the coin is merely facing away.
And I tell myself lots of things on the days I attempt to hold myself up, but today it's these:
1) Matter is neither created nor destroyed, It's true as anything I know. Because being babylost means having to resolve the mindbending gap of alive and dead, and that work is never finished. Which somehow makes the fear both real and illusory, but never strictly bullshit. Out of all the reams of grief lit thrust my way, the only thing I read that really hit home was about "the myth of acceptance", which stated that acceptance is not an expected stage of losing your own offspring because it is too devastating. It is beyond the beyonds. Hence, The Ride.
My daughter Thisbe lived 41 hours and for the rest of my life, the ride will take me transcendentally high when I can somehow love her fully - no matter where she is - and furiously, dreadfully low into the bottomless hole of her absence. Both real, so real.
Someone suggested to me that experiencing "the worst" is proof that, having survived it, I really don't need to fear anything ever again. Nope, I can't take that bet (and had a lesser person said it to me...I might have tried to hurt them). Like you, I have to embrace what I can with all the courage I can scrape together at the moment, but the only thing that makes love and joy beautiful now is allowing myself to feel them while not letting myself forget the other side of the coin is merely facing away.
And I tell myself lots of things on the days I attempt to hold myself up, but today it's these:
1) Matter is neither created nor destroyed, and "that mystery [she] hast leapt across" separates us, but does not undo her existence. She's real. So my job as her mother is still to love her, love her anyway. I feel less crazy about attempting that when I feel all the love heaped into posts like yours, Chris.
2) I should try to seek resilience rather than happiness (but I'm not there, not even trying yet). It just seems like the only answer to surviving the ride.
3) Nothing but Thisbe's loss has, or would have ever, illuminated the depth I now see in my husband and my son (we had one miscarriage before the latter came along, and I want to acknowledge that not having a living one to let the pressure off your grief and longing probably puts me on an altogther different ride, and I wish you and your wife the most golden luck in the world for future children who will outlive you in a robust blaze of happiness). This is something I can do because of Thisbe's love: quit rhapsodizing - somewhat hypocritically - about her, and love my living family way,way better than I have.
4) I would never ever trivialize Thisbe's loss to a purpose, a "here's why" (I am not a believer in plans and certainly never god's plan). Sometimes aching shuts me down and sometimes it makes me act and I try to welcome both as states in which I can be better at keeping Thisbe a part of me for life.
5) I always feel better when I shower.
It's been 9 weeks since Thisbe died and I have to keep reminding myself of this, because I am usually certain it's been 200 years. I'm mentioning this now because a voice tells me to shut it, I'm probably still just in denial. Yet I am grieving and I want to reach out to the folks here who give me so much comfort and companionship as well as wisdom.
This paragraph brought tears to my eyes. At almost three years out from the death and birth of my son, it's been awhile since a Glow post has brought me to tears. I felt an enormous surge of love for my living sons and for the one who is so far away from us.
Beautiful. Thank you.