The Child Window

“I want my son,” I whisper to the old climbing rose draping herself on the sagging remnant of the aging fence. I look down the fence line where the rose hedge once burgeoned forth with hundreds of roses, now there are only three bushes left and blooms are scarce. He always came home in May and we would walk the hedge, the thornless Zephirines filling the air with their old bourbon fragrance. The air also perfumed with the sweetness of his soul who saw the beauty in our tiny patch. The gentle, dusky peace of those evening moments lie shackled while a different energy surges and creeps into my soul.

Now there is a constant buzz, a hum in the background of my brain, a program commandeering a quadrant of my brain. The program swells in size and dominates the higher functions slowing processing, at times it quiets and shrinks back allowing moments of respite, but its there in the task bar, open and running. Justin’s death is burned into my brain, it is impossible to create a ghost of the former brain and go back to the old operating system. So the new program runs and runs taking energy and swallowing disk space.

I am finding parts of my memory overwritten. I am told to treasure my memories, but they aren’t accessible. They are shadows on the disk, the files too compromised to piece together the old data. The memories are like so much desk clutter that I have swept into the top drawer.

I manage well. I am high functioning. But let updates happen and oh shit, we crash and burn. New software is incompatible and data is lost, nothing is where it was, neural pathways are rerouted and the hardware melts. But as the front end crashes, the program “Justin is dead” never stops running in the background. Every second of every day.

What is the new software that crashes the system? Life. Little stuff, big stuff, all the stuff. Mother’s Day, Christmas Day, days of the week ending in “Y.”

The worse days are when modal windows pop up without warning and fill the screen demanding attention. It hangs there in front of your eyes and you cannot access the screen behind it no matter how hard you bang on your keyboard.

This is what Wikipedia has to say about modal windows

“In user interface design for computer applications, a modal window is a graphical control element subordinate to an application’s main window. It creates a mode that disables the main window but keeps it visible, with the modal window as a child window in front of it. Users must interact with the modal window before they can return to the parent application.”

A child window! The modal window as a child window! How often do I see Justin’s face drop down in front of my mind’s eye and I see those dancing bright eyes, and that smile. And there is the paradox, the child window must be engaged or one cannot return to normal function, but how? How do I mother a dead son? What key combination resets the screen, what restores the integration of our lives?

Walking the hedge in the rain, I linger at the rose who is my particular friend. Thorny wild berry vines invade her space, wild mulberry seedlings crowd her canes, yet she is showing the red of new growth. I need to move her, she needs more sunshine. I trust the pruning process, I will prune her hard and tuck her into a new space. She will re-establish her roots growing lush and green, dripping once again with fragrant pink petals.

A hard reboot. Pruning. In my mind’s eye, I see my rose picking up her skirts and tip toeing across the lawn on her roots to her new home and settling her canes around her. She brought some of earth with her from her last home, but she sinks into the new earth and stretches out her roots.

I interact with the child window when I sink my hands into the earth that is teeming with life. Fecund, fertile, earth. I touch my child’s face as I mother each plant that I nestle in the rich soil. I return to the parent application and resume normal function. My new normal. I make space for the program of Justin’s death that runs in every cell of my body, I integrate the reality of death into my daily life. His death revealed new wood, new growth. My rose and I tip toe toe together swishing our roots around us and find new places to grow.