Coins

I am struggling today with the “what ifs”. I read that the brain actually prefers guilt over helplessness. Mine is desperately trying to make sense of senselessness. Grief, it seems, can make us become our own harshest judge.

I remind myself, moment to moment sometimes, that the medical professionals didn’t even know how sick you were. The labwork beguiled the raging infection within you. I just get stuck in the loop seeing it all in hindsight and, I know, that is unfair. It is called “counterfactual thinking” because the randomness of it all is so unsafe. Guilt creates the illusion of control and it is less frightening than believing nothing could have stopped your death even though that is where the harsh, cold, cruel truth resides.

For twenty-four years my nervous system tied my wellbeing to yours and made your safety my biological responsibility. It was beyond maternal instinct. It was in the very system that made me who I am. Apparently, the neuroscience of it is my brain hasn’t immediately understood yet that our relationship has changed. It still wants to know how to find you, protect you, and fix whatever is wrong. It has not relaxed enough to accept I only find you in my memories now. My brain is deceiving me to search the past instead of the present. It is running thousands of alternative timelines looking for the one where you would have survived.

My heart knows though even if I found a timeline in which you lived you still would have not. It is a form of self torture of love not ready to let go. My brain exhaustively is still trying to protect you even though my heart knows you are where you no longer need my protection. You have HIS and there is nothing from which you need protecting. It seems now the only protection I can offer is me from myself.

Sweet boy, I fight the feeling that I failed. I should have, I could have prevented this yet still know I had no control. I cannot control when God says yes and when God says no. How I wish I could. You would still be here with me.

The average distance between the head and heart is twelve inches. For me, it is measured in years…twenty-four of them. My watch has ended but I can’t seem to put the sword down quite yet. The battle is no longer for your health. The war that rages is between my heart and my mind. Grief set me here in the in-between. This is not where I am supposed to stay. This is not where God wants me to be. I know with all certainty you would not want me here.

For now, my sweet boy, I travel back and forth. They are both torturous and broken lands. Sometimes a reprieve allows me to wait in the middle. The irony that my head is protecting my heart and my heart protecting my head is not lost on me. Both are in the process of healing and neither are home. Not yet.

The struggle is two sides of the same coin. My heart and my head are who I am. Each are trying to protect the other and even with the best intentions the flipping creates a chaotic cacophony that just hurts. The day of agreement, they say, is a while away. Grief this deep and this profound does not dissipate soon enough.

I am waiting for the funeral home to call me back to let me know when I can bring you home. We finally have enough money to pay their bill. I am sorry it took so long. I have cleared a space in my office for you. We sat and had coffee there every day. You would sit for hours while I worked on the computer. The only thing you ever wanted in life was to be in the same room as me. It was my truth as well. In some way others might find morbid, I find comfort having you with me still.

Your brothers picked out an urn with a picture frame on the front. We liked the idea of being able to change the pictures. They miss you.

This pain I feel is another two sides to the same coin. For twenty-four years I basked in the glow of so much love and the honor it was to care for you and have you care for me. The coin flipped on February 21st. As great as the love between us is the despair that sits on my heart every day. I know it will get better ever so slowly. The day will come when I think more about your life than your death. I pray it comes soon, sweet boy.

As I sit in the living room on this gloomy day I find another coin. Your chromosomal deletion is what made you special and beautiful and loving. The coin flipped and your chromosomal deletion is what made you not survive.

For today, the coins all lay face up in a way that is unbearable. Yesterday it was sunny and eighty degrees. Today it is snowing. Even nature flips her coin.

I take great comfort that though the coins flip, the promise of our loving God is the final landing will be

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away. Revelation 21:4