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I am an Incognito Disaster.
You can’t see the mayhem only millimeters out, but it’s there, inside.
You can’t see my toes curl as I cringe when I re-live the day Silas was born.
Cars swerve around my thoughts as I drive.
I’m worn out. Weary. The hoops have won. There are simply too many of them to jump through just to get back to normal.
Away in New Hampshire was the perfect place to hide. I felt like if I stayed in bed, everything would stop. Or the other way around, if I never went to sleep, I’d never have to wake up and face another day.
As always, the leaving was the worst. I woke up at 5am on Sunday morning already rolling through my brain the tangy, bitter bubbles of worries and concern. My stomach was frothing. I made deep breathes unclench my hands, and then I fell back to sleep, for a little while. But soon it was time for goodbyes and a drive.
Every mile brought decisions and responsibilities closer. All of the uncertainty on the horizon made me apprehensive.
Instead of being able to just get up and get shit done, I now have to do a hundred extra things simply to return to a moderate baseline of normality. The anniversary of Silas’ death became the foundation and backdrop to both of Lu’s recent car accidents and although we are grateful that she is fine in both instances, at the same time, we’ve had enough.
Unfortunately, the Universe is bigger than me, so my enough is not a fraction of what the Universe can put forth. Why it has Its Malevolent Eye on me, I do not know but nonetheless, now and then, I still do manage to have fun. For example, today, I was a guest on a show on NPR and truly it was a dream come true.
I have been listening to NPR for 10 years. I cut my Public Radio teeth on WGBH in Boston and the Car Talk guys have kept me smiling on many a brutal weekend mornings this past year. I would give up TV for the rest of my life provided I could keep NPR and the NYTimes. The Internet is non-negotiable, though.
So then today on one hand a dream came true, and on the other, at the garage where my totaled Matrix is stored they had already stuffed it far away in the back even though I called to say I was on my way to empty it completely.
I want the tires, too. I just bought those fucking things along with a clutch 2 months ago and the transmission last year. Maybe it is best to be done with that machine and start over with a fresh Matrix I can drive into the ground on the roads of CT, delivering coffee.
So many hoops, though, just to get back to normal. Finding the car, financing, insurance, title, registration, emissions DMV, DMV… D…M…V. So many actions and requirements that must be executed before I can get back to anything at all like that regular-ole-shit-ass life I’ve come to know and love(?).
The Universe doesn’t stop, though. And it’s bigger than me.
Right now, to be honest, I think It is being a bit of bully.
But whatever, I can take it. I’ve got fresh beer from friends from around the World, and love from so many people. Today I got to be on NP-fucking-R and I got to sound as though I know a few things about coffee. And for today that wins out over the crumpled frame of my totaled car.
The silence is deep. I hear the echoes of what was and what should have been.
Lu in labor then. A first birthday party now.
Instead it is just quiet. The emails only buzz. The phone only blinks, messages of love within.
The humongous sunflower out front is bowed low with the promise of another thousand just like it. Bowed low with sadness too, with the weight of our grief bright and brilliant during this first gorgeous fall.
Every day when I open my eyes, it is the first day that Silas wasn’t here. This year was three hundred and sixty-five of those. Tomorrow will be three hundred and sixty-six.
Every time I can’t believe it. Every time it is true.
But you must excuse me now. I have things to smash.
Everything but the sunflower. The sunflower stays.
I’m not sure how to do this, what to call it or how to get through it. The anniversary of Silas’ birth and death is on Friday which means I am a year deep into this nightmare and still mostly lost.
Our plan is to spend time away with my brother’s family, up in New Hampshire. Their house is cozy and safe, tucked onto a hillside in the midst of trees and trails, the canopy of stars endless above.
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.
For me, there are two kinds of Things in the World.
There are the Fixable, and the Unfixable. And really, it is as simple as that.
This month begins the anniversary of the ultimately Unfixable. Losing Silas is something I can learn to deal with or not, but I cannot ever change it.
I figure it is still essentially an even bet at this point. Odds might be slightly leaning in favor of mental stability and longtime survival, but I’ve only had a year to assess, and conditions could change.
I expect this month to be awful, but it won’t be as bad as last October. And at least I know what I’m getting into, on some level. But life is full of surprises.
Even the mundane can be surprising. That I can get out of bed. That I have not slipped silently to the edge of everyday life. That the sunset is beautiful every single time.
So I suppose I should not have been surprised when I got a call from Lu on Sunday morning that I could barely understand at first, because she was sobbing hysterically. She was a in a car accident. No one else was involved. She was fine, completely and totally fine, but the car was not. A spider had startled her and she veered onto the median and then spun out across the highway.
There was a period where she was traveling backwards down the highway, the driver’s side scraping against the right-side guardrail before being spun back out into the center of the road that is impossible to understand. Even more impossibly no cars hit her and she missed all those around her. She spliced into a wormhole and avoided unfixable disaster by an invisible thread of a spider’s web.
Should we feel lucky? I think so. Sure, it will cost some cash to put the car back together new, but really, who gives a shit? I would pay any amount of money to ensure Lu will always be safe. I would offer unimaginable sums to have Silas back. All of that is impossible. Fixing the car is not.
In a way I’ve become immune to the everyday bullshit that gets people down. Lu still feels beset on all sides by dangerous forces. She’s waiting for the good news to change everything about our lives. I’m amazed she still retains that capacity for hope and optimism. The very fact that she believes with all her heart that eventually things will get better proves that her spirit is unquenchable and forward-looking.
I don’t have that. Somehow through my pragmatic realism (read fatalist/pessimist) I manage to stay rather content and at times now even happy. But my baseline for success is extremely basic and direct.
My fundamental goal is to get through the day and not completely freak out because my son is still dead. Every time I do that, I fucking rock.
If I can actually do my job and roast a sweet batch of beans, or find a new account or put another piece together that improves my business and career, well then get out the fucking horns and strobe lights ’cause we’re gonna have a party.
For Interacting With Other Humans Successfully Without Revealing Disaster I give myself a delicious beer. For Making Necessary Phone Calls or Mailing Items At the Post Office I am rewarded with either chocolate or an hour with the paper, or both. For Getting out of Bed, I’m owed a Nap.
I’m not waiting for life to get Lucky for me. I’m have no expectations beyond more of the unexpected, all the time. I don’t think it will ever be better. There will be good times I’m sure, but I’ve seen the darkness. I’ve felt it pervade my being with a terrible and helpless truth that I can never unfeel.
Life is not just what happens to us, but also how we deal with it. I’ve learned, this year, that I can deal with almost anything, somehow or another. I can hold on to the core of my being when reality itself is being torn asunder. I hate the way it feels to be in this life, but it is pain made of up of truth and love and longing that is incredibly raw and real. I have to live extra because Silas could not.
That Lu came so close just the other day is beyond terrifying, beyond thought. Is it appropriate to feel as though something or someone was looking over her the other day? I don’t even believe in that in the least but I cannot help but think it. Can I do that? Can I put Silas in the spots where I need or want him? Can I fill in the mysteries and rare magic with his impossible presence? And once down that path, where does it lead?
Above all, though, there’s at least one thing more I have to know. I can’t get it out of my brain, from the second Lu told me in hysterical shock, when she spun out on 91 and lived to tell about without a scratch or a bump. I could not help but wonder…What happened to the spider? I’m sure it’s still alive. So is Lu. So am I. Some days, though, one year later, I really don’t know how.
“Handling the Shattered Nutcase“
I’m not there yet. Still got a ways to go before the World can pass through me without pain.
I held Naiomi this past weekend and it was great. Didn’t break down or freak out or fall apart. I walked in, saw her in her baby chair, looked directly into her enormous blue eyes and picked her right up. There was no question about it. All of the previous times in her 6 months on this planet that I’ve been with her I devolved into a sodden mess or wigged out on her ultra-newborn-ness.
Now I can begin to get to know her and ensure that someday I’m her favorite.
All the babies I know born since Silas hold a special place in my heart. They are all the almost-mines. They are the what-could-have-beens. They are my surrogate kids.
That’s not to say the ones that came before Silas don’t count at all. In fact, those kids are all my friends already. They are easy. The more recent children take extra effort for me to accept and connect with. I must do it, though. To do otherwise is to nullify his brief existence. But it is so hard.
I hate that feeling, that I have to shy away from the best new parts of my loved ones’ lives. It kills me that I cannot share in the joy of their new children. And it is impossible to feel like that and maintain healthy relationships.
I need my friends. For me, friends are as essential as water and food and sleep. And family, of course, is the thick red of my blood and the invisible light my soul. Together they pull me along into every next day, where somehow, sometimes, it does manage to feel a little better than it did the day before.
That is today, though. That is right now. Tomorrow is a whole other story, and one I cannot even begin to get into until I’m through it and beyond.
I want tomorrow to be wonderful. I want to be free of fear and pain and sadness. I want to trust that the Universe will at least look the other way as we slip by into modest contentment and peaceful dreams. I want to celebrate the arrival of every new child and crush the jealousy and resentment I feel when I see everyone with everything I want but do not have.
It is difficult to contain the complexity of this longing and sadness and love and laughter and depression and brittle strength, and resilient weakness, and despondent determination, and resolute indifference, every day, all the time.
Sometimes I forget how fucked up I am. Sometimes I even feel okay.
I thought holding Naiomi proved that I had transformed and stepped forward. But then the very next day my oldest and bestest friend appeared with his weeks-old-son, and I nearly ran screaming into the woods. I knew they were coming. I was glad they were there. But Henry in his harness and the brutal reality of his beautiful presence was impossible for me to experience.
Even from forty feet away I could sense his newness, and it reminded me inexorably of all the moments I never had with my son Silas.
I want a new way of doing things. There is a serious lack of community in my life that the TV cannot complete. I get it here and there through my work, and I love that part of my life, but the people of my tribe are far too far away.
You should be forced to hang out with people every single day. You should be put in the presence of others so that together you can each figure out what you like to do. A tribe of two is not enough. It’s a start, but it is only that.
We need more than that, anyway. We need the blood of our kin and the love of our friends. We need to share meals and fears, hopes and horrors. We have never been able to do this on our own.
A hawk flew low across the highway, nearly pulling my car off the road with the gravity of its flight. I twisted in my seat following its unfolding path but I didn’t crash. It vanished into my past and I wondered what that could have meant. Some would see portent in the flight of that hawk. Or maybe instead by the murder of crows that rattled far above only moments later.
Maybe the bloom of a flower is a signal for good things to come.
It would be so much easier if I could believe in any of those things.
But if I was part of a tribe there would be the Shaman to sit me down and tell me how to view the World. There would be a Prankster to take me out into the juicy night. There would be a Crowd and a Ruckus, there would be the Rituals. There would be answers?
Instead I know too much about how much I don’t know. Why the flight of one bird out of all the birds I see fly, why should that one have weight and grandeur and depth? Or why not accept the tenet of a Flawed Man, and all the Original Sin we are supposed to carry? Easier to blame forces beyond my control than to accept responsibility for what happened to Silas. I did what I thought was right and that’s all I have to stand on.
So then, perhaps my life is punishment for doing things wrong. All things. Every bad choice I’ve made, here it is laid back on me, stark and utter and raw. I’m a bad person that did bad things and my punishment is never knowing my son. But I refuse that possibility just like I refuse blame. The Universe doesn’t have the time or inclination to pay that close attention to me anyway. And really, I’m not that bad of a guy. Maybe if time flows backwards and I turn out to be a total and complete badass when I’m seventy two then this punishment may start to be deserved, but all that is unlikely at best.
And then there is the Meant To Be crew, and I just can’t get down with that at all. No matter what kind of major douchebag Silas turned out to be, or how contentious our long father-son relationship was, or any other permutation of What Could Have Happened, it is always better if he was here with us tonight. So this was never Meant To Be. This didn’t Happen For a Reason. This happened because sometimes things like this happen.
There is no why. There is only: What’s next? Once I began to start thinking again, a few weeks after that terrible day, I realized the only thing I could do was whatever was the very next thing that needed to be done. I’m better than that now. I can plan ahead again. But when the terror spins up and the grief overwhelms me my focus always comes back to the exact next thing I need to do to make myself feel safe or calm or incrementally better.
Tribes are good for that. The Prankster tricks me out of my maelstrom. The Confidant leans in to listen. The Shaman points at the hawk on wing on the blowing, invisible wind and I wonder if she is telling me something is coming, or if that Silas is here, or just that he is gone, as he is every day of my life.
It would be easier if I had something to believe in and understand implictly, but all that makes sense to me is that they all seem so arbitrary and contradictory. So I concentrate on the facts. We have each other. Our Tribe is robust but spread far and wide. Silas is gone and we will never have him back. And, it is a fact that when I feel the World turn slightly to me and bow, that I take it as a sign that something is definitely going to happen and I better be ready for anything. All the time. That’s my role in the Tribe.
“You just moaned,” she said in the darkness.
“I know,” I replied, suddenly wide awake.
“What the hell was that?” she asked me.
“Had a nightmare. We heard something so I got up to check it out and I went all around the house–it wasn’t this house, though, way more rooms and corridors–but there was nothing there. I was going back to bed and I then I saw someone standing there and it scared the shit out of me. I couldn’t see the face, just their slight form and I was so freaked out I actually puked into my hand and then threw it at them and shouted and then I woke up.”
“Well that wasn’t a shout you let out,” Lu replied. “More like a moan.”
“I know. I woke myself up!”
That was at four thirty in the morning. I fell back to sleep eventually, but it was a fitful sleep and when I got up for the day I had a crushing, twisting knot between my neck and my shoulder blade. That particular pain has been with me off and on for many years, and I know that whenever it flares up it means I’m way too stressed out.
I was fine before bed, but after that early morning nightmare the muscles seized up and spasmed. I could feel them throbbing all day.
It’s never fun to be in pain, but I have less tolerance for it now than ever before. I use ice and heat, Lu helps with massage and after a few days I’m usually back to normal. But the normal I go back to is far away from what it used to be.
Every day without Silas is brutal. Every day I do not get to be a father beats me to a pulp. Every month when we are again not pregnant what little bits of hope I’ve managed to find are ground further into a fine dust of desolation and fear. One night of sleep in a weird position or nodding off on the couch, head tucked into my chest, sends my neck into another twisted crimp that drains me of the energy to battle through another day.
Used to be I could deal with it. Sure I got surly and short when the worst of it hit, but most days I could push through and heal fast. Now I’m knocked flat because I do not have the mental reserves to deal with the physical pain in my neck as well as the emotional pain of every waking moment.
That afternoon I dropped off some beans at my first delivery and then headed south towards the shop. It was a glorious summer day and I tried to fight through the various bullshit setbacks that popped up here and there, as well as ignore the furious web of muscle across my back. The first gas station had been closed and then my card declined at the second. The road to my delivery was clogged with unmoving traffic so I took a long detour, cursing and wincing the entire way.
I finally made it there, did the drop and then drove on. As I steered with my right hand, I used my left hand to locate the nexus of the pain on my right shoulder blade, and I went to work. I pressed in and around, easing the muscles open and releasing the stored stress that gathered on my back.
Missed the Boat, by Modest Mouse came on and I kept pressing even as I sang along. I felt the pressure build behind my nose and eyes and mouth, and then from the speakers and me shouting along: “Well we knew we had the good things / But those never seemed to last / Oh please just last” and my throat closed, my tearducts opened and I spilled out raging hot tears as my breath caught in my larynx and a guttural groan escaped my clenched teeth.
I pressed against the muscle with two fingers and steered with five and neither the salted liquid in my eyes nor the blasting music around me ever obscured my vision. A hot stream of rage and pain cascaded down my cheeks and I flew down the road trailing thundering riffs and defiant lyrics.
I thought of the dream from the morning and how the fright finally pushed my stress into that tangled knot of muscle. From the moment I woke up, all I could think about was Silas: The day of his birth that still makes me flinch and squirm; every day since that I cannot believe I’ve survived.
I want to reject this entire option, this whole way of living and yet it lays on me and penetrates my soul so that I can be nothing else than the sum of everything I’ve done, and everything that has happened to me.
I didn’t sob or keen. I just puked tears out of my eyes and vomited groans and drove down the highway, on my way to work. And I was better by the time I got there. My neck and back still hurt, but I could clearly feel that I had released some of the emotion that had been building for many days.
The stress of my emotional pain makes my muscles tense. When that finally snaps into spasm, the pain pushes me over the edge to where it feels like my whole life is a jagged, broken mess. My physical body is my last refuge from the World at Large. When I feel physically good I am better at handling the episodes of sadness and grief. But when that is compromised by pain or sickness I have no place left to go, and I am left exposed to the raw truth of our loss, both within and without.
The rest of the day went smoothly, and at home that night I sat with Lu as we ate dinner.
“That dream has been with me all day,” I told her.
“It is so freaky,” she replied.
“Yeah, it scared the shit out of me. And so gross, I can’t believe I puked and caught it and threw it at the Intruder.”
“That’s one way to scare someone off.”
“I guess so,” I replied and then shuddered, remembering. ”And then I shouted!”
“Well, it wasn’t much of a shout.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” she replied, half-laughing. ”It was more of a ‘Eeeee oooohhh aaaahh’”
“Eeeeooohhhaaaaah…” I imitated her imitating me and she started laughing so hard. Then I tried to do it again but I was laughing so hard I couldn’t get the shout-from-the-bottom-of-a-nightmare-well out without bursting into guffaws.
Now all I have to do is go “eeeeoooahhh!” and we both crack up, and that is far better than either of us cracking up for real.
Kindness