Heavy

When will this tightness in my stomach subside?  There are seconds where I forget why I'm hurt, but my body doesn't.  My muscles stay tense, still waiting. For what?  The worst has happened and then some. The worst. 

I see other cancer families' posts about how they won't be doing Christmas this year.  They talk about the hell that Thanksgiving was to get through and how they can't do it without their babies.  We put up a tree, well four of them, and I cooked all day, and your brother and sisters were so excited to see the lights and touch the ornaments and then full on melt down because of exhaustion.  And I felt guilty.  But I won't take that away from them because at its strongest my pain is a warped creature. 

Where other parents, blood parents, parents who birthed kids and lived with them and made decisions can vocalize their hurt or anger or desperation it's good for me to keep my mouth shut.  If I explain one wound it will lead to another and then another and then circumstances I shouldn't talk about because you're gone, and there's no point. 

I wouldn't give my girls back for anything, but do you know my most perfect Christmas?  The one I got to play Santa with you.  You flew on a plane across the country and we picked you up and rode through Christmas lights on the way back home. You wore the horrid sweater I got you, the one your brother fits into now. It was the only early Christmas morning we ever had together.  Because usually your mom would keep you, and we would have gotten you Christmas Eve and Christmas night.  But this year you were ours, and I got to see your face when you saw your DS and your stocking and the gazillion other little nothing things you had asked for from Santa even though you weren't sure if you should believe.  Then we went to our new house in South Carolina and got a stomach bug where you and Daddy and I all threw up, wallowed, and felt awful leaving your 15 month old brother to wander the house in search of destruction.  That Christmas is my favorite because you belonged to us.  It was the singular Christmas where we were one family.  And I didn't know it would be. Just like I didn't know your last Christmas would be an unconscious one. Your last Christmas you didn't know what day it was.  Your last Christmas we didn't know you would never be home again. I thought we'd have a year to make it up to you.  I thought we'd have at least fifty of them.

I don't have the choice of canceling Christmas.  If I did I would cancel every single day.  I would lay in bed and cry until my body hurt, but I haven't been able to yet.  I have things to do, hearts to take care of that can't be broken any more than they already have. 

Your brother didn't say much about you being gone.  Not for 9 months.  He would talk about you, but not about you being dead.

And then something broke wide open in his little body, somewhere in there where I can't touch.  The first night it was the closest I've ever seen to a panic attack.  We were talking about the North Pole, about penguins and Santa and suddenly he turned white and wailed at me, "I don't want to die.  Because Beydn died. And I don't want to."

And what I heard was, "ANYBODY CAN DIE AT ANY TIME."

And what can I tell him?  Because they can.  They do.  And he will.  Just like me. And Daddy. And you.  But not for a long time.  That's what I told him.  That he won't die for a long, long time, and the thing about dying is that you will be waiting.  And it isn't something to be scared of because if Beydn can be strong enough to do it then we can to.  Some day.  Far, far away.  I hope.  But I don't promise because a promise like that would be a lie.

Anybody at anytime.  He already knows.  So I can't promise.

The next time we were watching a movie.  A sweet, happy Christmas movie.  And he looked over and said, like it had all just clicked, "Mommy, I think it's sad that Beydn died."

And he cried. For the first time.  He cried just for you.  Because, suddenly, nine months after he last saw you in the hospital, he realized he would never see you again.  He understood you weren't still at the hospital, and you weren't at your mom's or your Mimi's.  It became real to him that you are gone from our every sense of physical understanding.  It took nine months for him to accept that under his little brother ribs, but when he did it broke him.  He's like you that way.  You and Daddy.  He keeps the big things locked up.  Until he doesn't.  It just broke him.

We didn't have you like other families. We didn't get the luxury, and I'm sure the way we miss you is different.  But I'm also sure the way we miss you is just as scary.  It's all blind corners and broken angles.  We can't explain it.  We just feel it.  We taste it and swallow it.  We pull it out in the light for seconds at a time, then pack it back away just so we can keep on breathing.

It's growing inside of us.

If My Brain Would Ever Stop

The thoughts I have that I can't, don't, won't say out loud.

The hands we clung to.  The ones that were the only recognizable part on that last day in the hospital. The ones I forced to hold onto mine after that infuriating lost child episode at Disney.  The fingers I scrubbed dirt from, let knot my hair into a nest at the base of my neck as we fell asleep, helped paint cards, encouraged you to thieve icing with, kissed repeatedly in their tiny form when they pinched my skin too hard.  Those are dust.  Gone and yet still here. Burned.

I never thought too hard about the box that goes in the ground until that box wasn't you.  Or I did, but it passed.  I worried fleetingly that my grandma would be cold.  She needed that blanket she was always asking me to get her.  And the idea tugged at me that no one would be there to trim my grandpa's nails or that hair on his ears he was always telling me to cut off if I wasn't doing something in the next 5 minutes.  I've entertained some purely certifiable thoughts about dead people, but they're always the kind that resolve themselves in the asking.

 "I have to tell her about the baby."
"Except she isn't there to tell."

"I need to ask him what the name of that horse was he had in 1928."
"Nope.  Never gonna know the answer unless my memory spontaneously spits it out."

They come and go the way your brain processes that you're turning a door handle and, oops, the lock is fastened.

Some days I talk to the little box on Daddy's dresser.  Some days I pretend it doesn't exist.  Some days I want to take it and lay in bed, but I haven't yet. Profound self control. Half of you.  Probably some flakes of someone else.  I read that after cremation there's no way to gather all the ashes.  So, who do we have in our house that was in line before you?  And what people have taken a miniscule piece of you home for themselves?  And do they have it or did they scatter it?  Part with us, part with your mom.  Your Mimi asked for some, and Daddy gave it to her.  How could he not? She needs you too. But opening that bag almost killed us both.  Ash and white specks.  These hard white specks that I guess are bone.  And heavy.  So heavy and dense.  Just that almost half of you.  And there's more in other places, that I do and don't know about so, yes, you're nowhere and you're everywhere.  You're gone and infinitesimally existent.  And I'm standing in the kitchen while your brother asks for an ice cream cone, and thinking about the oxymoronic value of the whole thing. 

Things I can't, don't, want to say out loud.