From August 31, 2020
How does it feel to live with the loss of your son?
42 days until the one-year anniversary of the day my world exploded. The entry I read this morning in a grief book talks about the need to recognize that my feelings are a part of me, so what do I recognize about my feelings in 2020?
I am empty. My chest is a hallowed log. I miss my life from before. I feel like slowly over time it eroded and got away from me, and then the day Elliot died, an avalanche took off half of the mountain in seconds. An ax came and felled me like a tree.
At work, I adopt professional behaviors – my body just starts acting the way it has for 20 years. Elliot wasn’t really part of my work life, so he isn’t part of that realm. I do not look for him there. When I am at home, I can feel that he is not there, and often I am not present either. I am split between looking for him with my heart and mind and being present with others. I miss wrestling with the kids and having fewer regrets and fears. The childhoods of all five of my children are gone, and I miss being strong enough to carry them.
Split in two
Elliot’s death exposed the existence of a fundamental break, an estrangement. Elliot’s death has split me in two. I long for connectedness–connectedness to God, to Elliot, to Anne, to my children who are living, to friends, and to myself. There are these divisions inside me that make me wobbly. I have difficulty standing.
When de Saint-Exupery tells the story of The Little Prince, it ends just after the prince’s death. A snake bit him. The prince cannot return to his home in his physical body. The aviator misses the prince and wonders from moment to moment if everything out there in the heavens is still safe, especially the little rose. Who is caring for that delicate little flower?Are they attentive? Elliot is my little flower out there in the universe.
Learning to love in two worlds when everything is out of order
I wonder from time to time if Elliot is being tended. I know he is, but there are times of doubt. At the same time, I am inattentive too. I forget to water and prune the flowers in my garden here at home. Sometimes I even sit there noticing they are dry but I don’t get up.
Eventually, I will get better at loving Elliot who is far away and loving those who are here, but I have never had to love in two places at once like this. I miss my grandparents, miss my brother-in-law, and miss friends who have died. But this is different. I should have been the one to go first. Someday, I should be waiting out there for him. He is supposed to miss me from down here. Everything is out of order. So what do I feel? I feel like I am out of order.
