The Thing Is

9/11 was on the minds of most Americans this weekend. Never forget, people say. While everyone waved their flags and my Facebook feed was filled with old photos of the Twin Towers, I was thinking how much I don't really care about something that didn't really happen to me 20 years ago. Not very patriotic, I know. When I think of September 11th, I'm really thinking about what I will have to commemorate on the 12th and the 13th- what every parent fears- reliving the last hours of my son's life.

No, instead of recounting where I was when the towers fell, I'm trying to remind myself of that final Saturday where everything was so wonderful we didn't even stop to take a picture. Everyone was having a great day- a lovely morning walk, a mother/son car ride to drop off gear at a friend's house and pick up some groceries. Good naps and persimmon adventures with dad. If we had been told our world would be turned upside down later that evening, I don't think we could have planned a better day. We soaked up all the joy we could. I hold onto that knowledge when the sadness sits on my chest like an anvil.

It is difficult, even now, to imagine the rest of my life without my son. I think any minute I will turn and see my smiling boy, playing with his sisters or listening intently to The True Loves. 

How many kids do you have? someone asks. Three, I say, without wondering how much I want to share with this person. I'm not waiting for them to start counting. I don't watch as they try to reason out why there are only two kids hanging off my arms like monkeys because I have all three of my monkey children surrounding me. I don't have to explain what has happened to our family. I don't sense the pity placard being draped around my neck like a noose. 

I'm back to the denial phase, I guess.

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. The 5 Stages of Grief. Except, that isn't its formal name. It's actually the Kübler-Ross Grief Cycle. Words are such powerful things- when we think of stages, we think of linear steps. First denial, then anger, and so on until we're cured of all our sadness. What a neat and tidy picture that provides us! But the real idea behind the 5 stages is actually that it's a cycle we will repeat until we ourselves are the ones for whom others weep. We just keep feeling all these emotions one after the other -and sometimes a few at a time- until we're dead, too. That is a much less tidy picture, isn't it? 

I have had moments of peace and clarity in the last year. I have found acceptance at times, but on days like this, I find myself more finely tuned to the other four. Some might read this and think, oh, I hope she feels better soon. Or, How awful, but I know it will get better with time. And both of those are wrong, even though they're filled with the best of intentions. Liam's death will always be a hot knife cutting out my beating heart. 

I don't try to avoid the cycles. Instead, I attempt to embrace as much joy as I can as I walk through them. Each day, I have a choice to love fiercely, knowing the cost, or not. To be compassionate to the suffering of others or to turn selfishly inward and ignore the pain around me because don't I already have enough? I don't always succeed. I'm not Mother Theresa over here (see my first paragraph if you don't believe me). But, I do think the gift of suffering is to more keenly appreciate the beauty of this fleeting life. 

I'll leave you with this poem that I read recently as it perfectly sums up where my heart wishes to be.

The thing is

to love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you've held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your

    hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical

    heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you like your own

    flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think, How can a body withstand

    this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again.

-Ellen Bass