New Year – Are We There Yet?

I want a cigarette. Bad. I’m sure I could scrounge up a pack if I looked hard enough.

I can taste it. It wouldn’t be menthol. He doesn’t smoke menthol. And it’d be short…much shorter than the ones I used to smoke. I would breathe deep. I’d fill my lungs and then feel the burn as smoke poured out of my nose.

I want a drink. Make mine a whiskey…cinnamon flavored whiskey and coke, please…on ice, of course. I want whiskey at 9:43 in the morning. I want to scorch the back of my throat as it slides down.

Cake would be good. Bakery cake with sticky white icing. A decorated cake…pink flowers…green leaves…no writing, please. And the inside should be yellow and spongy and leave gooey brown goodness on the bottom of the plate when you slice it.

Yesterday morning I looked at myself in the mirror as I dressed for work. My face, despite the artificial glow of carefully applied foundation, bore no expression. Good Morning America played softly in the background as the words “Happy New Year” came to mind.

Only it’s not happy. It’s not happy at all. Not that it’s not ever happy, there are happy days. But this day is not happy. So it’s a new year but not a particularly happy one… so far.

I hadn’t realized this before…this marking of the year that I do in my head. In a way it’s a relief as it serves to explain why January 1st has little to no meaning for me anymore. My year doesn’t begin and end at the same time as everyone else’s. My year ends on February 25th and begins again on the 27th…if I make it.

I leave the “if” in there because I need permission not to. On this day, more than any other, I grant myself permission to consider what would happen if I didn’t. Because, I don’t have to. No one does. Life is a choice we make every day. Someone else said that first, I know. Maybe that person, like me, experienced the capriciousness of life. Maybe they lost someone.

I don’t like to use the word “lost”. I didn’t lose Trey. He died. Actually, if anyone is lost, it’s me. I’m lost. More lost on some days than I am on others, but I’m always lost. I’m navigating a path I never thought to take. And yet, now that I am on it, I often try to imagine what would happen if I had to start all over again. What if I became even more lost? What if the thing that I never thought would happen happened again? Because that is the one thing I do know. The one thing I do know is that the worst does happen.

It’s a gray day, as it should be. It was this way last year, too. I suspect it always will be.

You can’t prepare. It hits you about a week out, without warning. Sadness covers you like a blanket. You feel the weight of it and you carry it around all day until, at last, you can close your eyes and escape. With any luck, sleep takes your blanket and leaves a respite in its place. It might last a day, two days. This year I was lucky, I had a few good days before the words “Happy New Year” appeared as though written in red lipstick on the mirror in front of me. And that was that.

Yesterday my boss’s face appeared over the top of my cubicle.

“Enjoy your time off tomorrow.”

Filled with irrational rage, I stood up and left the space without speaking. A big part of me hopes he realizes sometime today. That same part, the hurting part, the part that I’m allowing to run rough-shod over any and everything today and only today, that part hopes that he feels like a worm when he remembers.

It’s 10:43 now. I’m still in my bathrobe, my hair looks like shit, and I’ve never needed a mani/pedi more in my whole entire life. But, I’m not smoking and the half-empty can of Coke Zero on my desk remains untainted. The jury’s still out on the cake. My son and I are having lunch. He, too, is marking another year. He and my daughter-in-law are choosing the restaurant. I may choose to eat cake.

That’s what today is about; making choices and leaving room…deciding not to smoke, how to dress, what to eat, and whether or not to live. And, I’m leaving room…for tears, irrational emotions…and, quite possibly, cake.

2013 started out gray. 2012 ended the same way. For most of the last week the skies have been heavy, bloated, on the verge of crying. I know this feeling. I spent a good portion of last year feeling this way.

I don’t like to hear someone say “This day can’t be over soon enough!” or “I wish it was Friday already!”. Ask my son how many times he’s heard me say “Don’t wish your life away!”.

And yet, as I sit at my desk watching the first few drops of rain ping one leaf at a time on their way down, I am aware of a sense of relief that a new year has begun, that the old one is finished, and that we’ve careened past yet another milestone no more damaged than we were going in. And, I am grateful.

Thanksgiving was different; not bad, not difficult, just different. Christmas was different, too…a little sadder, and angry, but not in a fierce way. Angry in a wistful way. Wistful as in “Isn’t it a shame he chose not to be here?” Because, he did. Trey chose not to have Christmas with us. And we know how to do Christmas! We have great Christmases! I don’t understand why he wouldn’t want to be here…

There are lots of things I don’t understand.

I don’t understand why a general practitioner happily rewrites a middle-aged woman’s Zoloft prescription for months on end, but when that same woman suggests her adolescent son might also benefit from anti-depressants, he refuses without listening and looks at her as though she should be ashamed.

I don’t understand a therapist who, after several unsuccessful attempts at getting an obviously troubled teenager to open up, dismisses his mother with “You’re wasting your money and my time. Don’t bring him back until he’s willing to talk.”, or a high school counselor who, upon being alerted by a classmate that a student is cutting himself, shakes her head at the parent saying “We simply can’t have that here.”, as though mental illness is somehow catching and another kid will see his scars and think them cool and before you know it everyone is cutting.

Anyone who tells you mental illness carries no stigma never tried to get help for a disturbed child.

I do understand, though, the horror inherent in the realization that the weapon-wielding monster might have been my son and the ever-present fear that the next time he might not be pulled over before crossing the center line.

My son is dead but he didn’t take anyone with him. I understand that. And, I am grateful.

I am told that the black hole in my memory where last January and most of February used to be is normal. I likened the space to a blank chalkboard when describing it to my therapist who agreed that the missing chunk of time may, indeed, contribute to my feeling that every moment since is a do-over.

In one of those moments, several weeks after I began seeing her, I realized parts of me I hadn’t missed are back. My wounds are healing, as all wounds do, by reclamation. The “skin” has grown back, not as new skin but as a continuation of the old, only better, stronger, scarred and thus resilient. I like her, the woman I am becoming; the one I was before but newer, stronger, with a chance to be better.

That is his gift.

He always did that. He always brought me gifts. From the time he was very small, if he went outside, he came back in with pockets full of rocks and handfuls of dandelion heads. He was sure every rock was a gem. And they were. I kept them all.

At Thanksgiving last year he brought me bird’s nests to add to my collection. He frequently came across them in his work and saved them for me. Some were square, as though formed inside a box. Some were round and tiny. And one had parts of blue eggshell inside.

And he wrote me notes like the one I found a few weeks ago while cleaning out a file cabinet.

Thank you so much from all of us. Without you I/we would be nothing. In my whole 21 years you have never let me down. You are absolutely without question the best mom in the world. I love all you guys with all my heart.

Thank you.

Love, Trey

Category: New Year

Two

Mixed Blessings