Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think.

The reverse of Winnie the Pooh who rests his head in his hand and says to himself “think, think, think.” I tell myself “don’t think, don’t think, don’t think” every night. I can be falling asleep standing up, to the point of what we call “stupid tired”, beyond being productive, but once I put my head on my pillow and all is quiet, I think of my boy. The pain that was safely partitioned all day creeps in and I begin the battle of my mind. I need to sleep, but my mind wants to remember him, think about him, think of what it was like to actually see him smile, hear his laugh, watch the light in his eyes. And you think how long it has been since you have seen him, you worry you will forget his mannerisms, all of a sudden you feel like you can’t remember anything. People keep on saying it is because of my age that I struggle with memory, it isn’t. There really isn’t any definitive proof that aging means memory loss,  it is the crowd of voices in my mind. Sometimes I can’t remember what is being said to me over my heart screaming Justin’s name, it is the only time I hear his name. The longer your child is dead, the less you hear their name.  It is hard to do the work of grief during the day, but the night is quiet and pulls you onto paths that need to be walked.  And I am too tired to walk them, so I begin the litany, don’t think, don’t think, don’t think, just sleep.

The mind will not be denied. For three nights in a row I have had nightmares and lay awake for hours afterwards. The first nightmare was about not finishing projects, assignments not completed, forgetting a class, and the awful stress and tension that came with not being on top of things, for failing. The second night I dreamed of flooding waters. Of having to leave our pets as the water rose higher, of trying to draw their pictures so that I would have something of them before the water came and took everything. So much water and absolutely helpless, there was nothing I could do to save them. Last night was of water also, I managed to wake Doug, the dog, and the cats with this nightmare. I don’t remember details, but it left me with such a sense of dread, so much water again, unfriendly water. Justin died in water and there was nothing I could do to save him. I still feel like I failed, something happened that I wasn’t prepared for, I didn’t have my homework done, couldn’t stop it, and someone died. Not rational, of course it isn’t, but that is how our brain processes the chaos of grief. If I won’t think about it while I am awake, the subconscious will present it in other ways. I think it is actually a fail safe in the brain so we don’t box stuff up and bury it so deep that is eventually surrounds and buries us.

Justin’s birthday is two weeks from today. He would have been 29. I have a plan in place for that day, I will be attending a three day conference, surrounded by people and activity. Not really my comfort zone, people and noise. But I fear a narrow world more. In some ways, before Justin’s death, my world was small, and now a veil has been lifted to see a completely different world view, a very different reality. Part of honoring Justin now is to go out into the world and see it for the first time. It is a scary thing, you enter back out into a world with wounds that are still weeping, you begin to understand that those wounds still bleed, will always bleed, especially if bumped hard enough. I look in the mirror at a face I don’t recognize, at eyes that are always red and you become hesitant to be out in public.  I often look I have been crying, and I probably have been, tears slip out at all times and not just for Justin. You cry for the hurt you have inflicted on your loved ones in years past, you cry for people who you don’t even know who suffer their loved ones being on a plane that is missing, you cry for abused animals who have no voice. You cry for a world so insensitive and scared of pain that self-medicating against feeling pain has become a first line defense.

There is a quote attributed to Mother Teresa, I don’t know if she said it or not, but I remember reading it and it stuck with me, I was clueless how to understand it, or how anyone in their right mind would utter such a thing, but the quote is this:

“May God break my heart so completely that the whole world falls in.”

Now it makes sense, I don’t like it, I don’t want the world in my heart, it is too painful and messy. I understand now that the shortest distance between two hearts is pain and beauty. Pain bridges gaps and differences that would have been too far apart to be breached, and beauty is a language that needs no words. God is present in both, hidden, yet present, perceptible, but unseen.

Perhaps I will not repeat the litany of  “don’t think” to myself tonight, I will just give myself over to the path that needs to be walked, allow myself that visit with my boy, think of his face and eyes, hear his laugh. Remind myself that anniversaries are hard, be gentle with myself , use a hundred post-it-notes to remind myself of what needs to be done, be grateful for those yellow stickies that help keep the train on track. Remember to laugh at the cat that steals them from me, remember to laugh at myself for not being able to remember where I stored the bulk package of those yellow lifesavers.  Remember a boy with dark hair and laughing eyes.