Fall is here.  The longsleeves and blankets prove it.  I knew it had arrived a year ago today, too, when I first cleaned out the birthing pool in the back yard as colored leaves dropped from above.

It is hard to believe I am same the individual that performed those actions and thought the things I did as I was preparing for Silas to be born.  The sweet hopefulness and naivety nearly sickens me when I read through what I have written.  Perhaps at some point today’s bleak despair will appear equally dated.  Only time will tell.

But Time is silent, and can only be discerned by the effect of its action on my mind and soul and the World around me.  I know time is passing because of how long I have missed Silas.  But Time is a trickster, too, because somehow it feels like I have always been missing Silas.  His absence fills my life, even in the parts before he was even a possibility.  He is gone from my distant past and my far future just like he is not here with me today.

There is a strange comfort to this time of the year for me now, though.  As the weather cools and fall slips in I am powerfully reminded of everything we went through at this time last year.  The raw shock and deep despair was suprising last year.  Now it is the invisible, impenetrable cloak I wear over my soul every second of every day.  This sensation is as close as I will ever get to my missing son.

This weather.  This light.  The feel of the chilly sheets as I slide into hiding, never to be seen again.  These are my thin threads of connection to him, to the time when he was near me.  Even though it is shot through with torment and loss, this time of year is his and I’ll take it.

I wish I could just crawl away with the cold snap of the fall breeze and huddle from the ravages of the Universe for a little while, just like I did last September and October.  I wish I could pull the Dead Son card, show it to everyone and just walk away.  I want nothing.  I want to be surrounded by love and left completely alone.  I want no decisions.  I want an easy ride.  I want to hide away and think about Silas and read and write and eat and drink and sometimes maybe go take a walk with Lu.

They must know that I’m not better.  I’m just better at hiding the ravages of losing him.  He is always not here.  That doesn’t change, so that place in me where he should be, that doesn’t change either.

I touch my tattoo every day and say to myself, “This is my son.  This is all I have of him.” And then I nod to myself sad and somehow satisfied that I found a way to pull him close and not break down and not fall apart and not shatter into a million razor shards every day, one more time, again.

September again and I’m calm.  Sad and fucked up, but calm.  Crisis and emergencies are scaled differently once you’ve had your son die.  There is nothing about work or money or any of life’s bullshit that comes anywhere near the level of emergency we dealt with last year and therefore, none of it is worth getting too worked up about.  Sure the anger is still there, and I do get fired up and pissed off, but they are small, passing events.  They have no bearing on the course of my life or the state of my soul.

Now, my soul is set to an impossible superposition where everything is the worst it can possibly be and yet often I manage to cruise through most days mostly happy within that envelope of sadness, somehow finding fun despite a pervasive, bone-crushing despair.

Missing Silas does not preclude enjoying delicious dinners fresh from the farm and garden.  Although my son is dead now and before and tomorrow, I have found that the only way to honor him is to not be consumed by the bubbling rage that sometimes burbles to the surface.  As much as I would love to hide away, I cannot do it.  I don’t have time.  There is too much work that I love to do, because autumn is superb coffee weather.  It warms me on the inside where I need it most.  And no matter where I go, Silas is always with me, silent in my heart.