Each day I watch as my son's world shrinks just a little bit more. Each day I watch as he no longer does the things he use to do. The things that he did everyday, without fail. I seldom see him sleep in the living room fort anymore. I rarely see him run around anymore. He never does his welcome home from work race about the house leaping over the back of the chair at top speed to land in the middle of the sofa anymore. He never has that goofy look on his face that made his sister chase him. All the things I cherished about our life together, all the things I cherished as I bore witness to their shared life together. All of it now seemingly gone.
He and Sylvia were a team. They did practically everything together. They slept in the living room fort together, ran around the house together, laid on the hot spot together. They would eat their midnight snack together after lights out, they would run around to the back of the house to talk to the birds in the garden, they would follow me around as I went about the apartment together. All of those things they shared, all of which he rarely does anymore.
I am afraid that his life will consist of sleeping with me, eating, paying stick, and napping in his loft. That he has in some way lost his will to live. These are all that he seems to do now and I am powerless to affect any change; and it is killing me.
I am watching as my life slowly shrinks too and I am just as powerless to affect change there either.
I brought Sylvia's ashes home yesterday. She had been staying with my friend Guido since the Vet called. At the time I had asked him if he could pick her ashes up because I just could not bear to do it.
I just wasn't ready to bring her home.
I don't think I would ever be ready but I had to do it. When I picked her up I starting crying. All the way home my jaw was quivering while I kept the tears at bay. As soon I walked in the door Lars knew it was her. There was the oddest look on his face as he looked up; one filled with equal parts of pain and happiness; all intermixed with longing.
I walked into the bedroom, putting her down on the dresser where all her cards are. As I laid on the bed I let the tears come. While I laid there sobbing, Lars climbed on the bed curling up behind my knees. That is one of his favorite places. It was both Sylvia's and Lars favorite place. I wonder if he knew it would comfort me to feel him resting against the back on my legs. That somehow it might help me cope. In a way it did; but in a way it just made the pain more profound. I laid there looking at her cedar box urn, crying, for a long time, the pain just as deep and abiding as it had been since the day she died.
Laying there I realized that even after a month I am no better than I have been; laying there I wondered will this pain ever subside? Will I ever be able to breath freely again?
Sometimes I wake up during the night, my chest hurting, feeling as if a 300 pound weight is sitting on it. I wonder in those waking moments, is this just another facet of my abiding grief? Is this just another sign of how my body is coping with loss?
Or not coping?
In those moments I am truly scared that I may never recovery from losing her. That maybe, finally, something has been triggered inside me that can not be reversed. That maybe something or somethings have finally accumulated over the decades due to all that I have experienced. That in this moment my body and/or my mind has finally reached its maximum breaking point. In those moments I wonder;
What comes next?
I worked in the garden today for the first time since Sylvia's death. I knew I needed to get out to at least start my regular chores, chores that I have basically neglected from the fall and before. But when I thought about changing into my gardening clothes after breakfast I just kept getting sick to my stomach. Before I went out I decided to lay down in bed for a while so I could stare out at the fern grotto.
The play of light and shadow in the winter is one of my favorites. The light is soft, like it is just barely caressing the fronds as the wind gently moves them in the breeze. As I was laying there I thought about how integrally connected the act of my gardening was to Sylvia. To both her and Lars. I remembered how I would turn around to see her sleeping on the perch that overlooks the fern grotto. And how she would sometimes stand on the bedding box and watch me as did my chores. How I use to talk to her as I worked. Then when I was done, how I would come in to shower, after which I would lay down on the bed so they would come and curl up against me as I napped.
I didn't dare turn around to look when I was out there although I did, just once, briefly, before I came in. I had to, if not only for honoring her memory. I think though down deep I just was hoping to see her there sleeping as always, her head curled under in that adorable way of hers. Hoping that maybe this last month without her had somehow just been a prolonged nightmare.
But she wasn't there.
In those tiny moments of clarity when all of me knows she is gone for good, that I will no longer be able to hold her in my arms, it is during these moments that I have that uncontrollable urge to claw the earth backwards with all my might, digging my fingers deep into the ground, as I try with all my might to somehow reverse time. To somehow get her back.
But I realize that I can't.
That she is truly gone.
And my pain gets only deeper and more profound.
It is nearly midnight. Nearly that time when the new year begins and the old one ends.
But for me there will be no celebrating. No clinking of champagne glasses. No midnight singing Auld Lang Syne. For me, midnight will signify just another threshold that takes me yet another day further away from my precious baby girl. Yet another day away from the last time I held her, from the last time she looked up into my eyes with unconditional love. Yet another day away from the last time I sang to her as she laid next to me, purring quietly, her head curled under in that adorable way.
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