Saturday, April 25, 2009

Bad Day - 1/29/09

I have learned to mark my days as follows:
"Today was a good day"....."Today was a bad day".
102 days and 7 hours ago those sentiments (pro or con) carried an entirely different meaning for me. Having a bad day could possibly mean disagreeing with my boss, overdrawing my bank account, miscommunication with my husband or facing a traffic jam on 90-94 West. These days, having a bad day means the carefully constructed veneer, that fluffy and safe insulation, which comes with the generous gift of distance, is removed. In the first ticks of the clock, the first few seconds of the curtain dropping on the debut of a bad day I see the following set before me. A beautiful boy, always a boy to me, laying attached to artificial life. I see clearly, myself, standing to the left side of his bed, holding his hand and kissing him on his temple, still unbruised and soft, murmuring " who will miss me now Nick?" Everything about him still held warmth and color and made it almost impossible to pry yourself away from his side. The warmth is the devil that tricks you into believing, believing for a moment that the possibility of a way out of the hell you are in is plausible. I have become a seeker of cold, to avoid remembering the hope and beauty that warmth can hold. I don't remember leaving the hospital, getting into my car or driving back to my parents house. I know I got there, I just really do not remember the journey. I do remember staring, for hours, at the walls in my parent's living room and thinking, what now? How does this all work? I've been to the funeral of a father, a grandmother, a grandfather, an uncle and great aunts and uncles, but nothing prepares you for losing a younger member of your family, a nephew who has always filled the roll of little brother. How do you find solace, meaning, consolation or motivation to even care about searching for anything that would come close to making sense? I find anger, hidden in pockets of my heart, for the people that live because of him. Are they worthy of the gift they have received? Do they appreciate the sacrifice and life lost to allow them to celebrate another day? Did their families say a prayer for our family at Christmas? And then I am ashamed at myself because the sacrifice was not mine to make and is therefore not mine to question. I was raised "right" as they say. I was raised to believe in a god that has infinite wonder, wisdom and reasoning that surpasses any mortal understanding.......but today I do not care.

Today was a bad day. I remembered and I unraveled.

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