You know that day you spent an hour writing your heart out and all those words vanish with a click of a button into the abyss of malfunctioning application… So goodbye Tumblr, because I don’t only talk the talk, but I also walk the walk…
Here is what I can remember from the last hour of writing;
It’s the 28th again, the start of three days of tears that can’t be stopped. And I don’t want to stop them anyway, it’s the time dedicated to cathartic cleansing, it feels good and bad at the same time, but we are used to that now.
The photo that appeared in my “memory” section on Facebook, opened the floodgates for today.
It brought back the memory of the tiny square of tissue paper the nurse handed to us as we waited for the results of Sara’s brain scan. I no longer remember if our reaction was “she will be pissed that you touched her earrings” or “she would have been so pissed at you if she knew”, I truly don’t know if that horrible reality was starting to sink in or not. J and me lost a lot of our brain cells due to the trauma of the following four days. We are still discovering new areas of damage and are learning to compensate for the loss.
The photo also brought in the memory of the last goodbye. What do you tell your child when you get to touch their warm, soft skin for the very last time? Love you seems hollow and almost meaningless after you have repeated it for the last four days for every waking minute. The only thing that came to my mind was “Be brave”. I don’t know if it did anything for her, but I think it was meant to be more for me, for us. Because dying appears easy from the perspective of the survivors. Dying is finite, but surviving requires all the bravery in the world.
Stephen Tobolowsky wrote in one of his short stories; ” Everything is a prison, everything is a doorway”
For the past eleven months I have been oscillating between searching for the door knob and the realization that prison door can only be unlocked from the outside. That’s despair, but the ultimate despair is surrendering to the fact that you grant outsiders the power over your life. And count me lucky, because I only know despair.
I don’t know if you get to be born with some evolutionary advantage of being able to walk forward no matter what or if it’s a skill that can be taught. Sara was definitely born with a fierce drive to move forward. We loved and despised this trait of her personality daily. When her “self” emerged we just tried to contain this force and make it more bearable for her and the people around her. I know I was born with less severe drive than hers, but it still took 41 years and the death of my only child to “tone it down”. Acceptance and kindness to oneself can only come from rebuilding a shattered universe. Sara shaped our universe for eight years and shattered it in a matter of few days. But ultimately I thank her for this crazy blow up. She made me to have to rebuild my universe and in that opportunity I could make it better, kinder, forgiving…
Our prison of loss became a doorway to a different life. I have struggled to comprehend why I was thrown into the prison in a first place, but by abandoning the question why, I reduced the sentence and suddenly the prison cell morphed into just another room with a doorway. I wonder how many of us have had their comfortable room turn into a prison cell without even realizing it. Or their prison cell giving them all the comfort they require at given time? Chicken or egg, who knows?
So Stephen even thou I understand your analogy, I think I have a better one; “Be it a prison cell or just a room, there is always a door” The question of choice of safe prison cell over very scary room with a doorway is up to everyone’s choosing. But just remember that leaving the scary room only takes some steps and opening the door. And I will share a secret with you, the door is never locked, because no lock can withstand the force of your decision to walk free. All you have to do is make couple steps in chosen direction and the scary room becomes a memory soon to be replaced by new adventures, new rooms.
ktojoy 