Sunday, February 19, 2012

I just realized that I am pretty much bonkers and should probably be locked up in a mental institution for a good long while!

After a nice trip outside, the sun peeking out and the weather about warm enough to skip any type of overcoat, I discovered I have lost my mind.

Next week I will be traveling to another location for my job. Just a day trip but I will have a passenger. Which of course means I need to clean out my filthy and I mean filthy car. I am not a messy person. At times I can be a bit OCD about cleaning but since November 2010 I have been incapable of taking care of things like I should.

My pregnancy with Braedon left me exhausted, tired, unable to stay awake some days. I slept a lot! More than I should have. Then we moved across the country. Which just added to my exhaustion. Packing, cleaning, unpacking, cleaning and getting adjusted to a new location. Bone weary exhaustion.

Then he died and a part of me died and I was still tired. Grief is heavy and drags you down in the abyss. Laying in a darkened alley, dirty broken, abused and left with legs that no longer work. A puddle of muddy water that I wallow in beneath the broken street lamps. Sirens off in the distance.

The car is littered with papers. Leaves from a walk in the woods months gone by. Envelopes from opened mail, kids jackets and school work. Shoes that hurt my toes and were tossed aside in exchange for whatever pair that I had with me that felt better. Broken toys, unbroken toys. But the worst is the papers.

I asked my husband why did I let it get this way? Going from one pregnancy to pretty much the next with grief thrown in does not help. Because I am still exhausted. So very tired. I fall asleep sitting on the couch after work. Lately dinner is whatever is easiest and quick. I know that some exercise would probably help but I don't even have the energy to get started. I stay on my feet at work a lot. This is about all of the exercise I can muster these days.

Ahhh but these papers. Why are they all there? I really just thought it was because I was tired. How silly of me. Silly, crazy, a bit demented me!

My husband starts cleaning, lifting each folded receipt I have thrown to the ground or stuffed in a cubby somewhere. May 2011? Really. Leaves? Why broken, dried leaves from a walk in the woods?

It all comes to me so clearly, in a moment of pure insight. They are bits of him, in my mind. These tiny scraps of nothing but so much of something. He was alive when I had them. The leaves from when I carried his urn at my side. The receipts for ice cream which I ate day after day towards the end of his life. The heat was unbearable and a vanilla cone is cheap. As I started to shake and cry. I thought, Wow, I have really lost my mind. I thought I was just lazy but no it is all a pipe dream. Each piece of something, I need it. It is something to keep me holding on. Holding on to what I can't have.

He took the car to clean it out. All of this will now be left in a trashcan by a vacuum at a dirty car wash. Eventually they will make their way to a landfill, to be mixed amongst the debris. There they will disintegrate as the days go by. Rain and heat will drag them into the ground. Turning into soil as the years pass. One day perhaps a tree will grow where these bits and pieces landed. Will this tree carry a piece of him? This is my mental state, attaching something to nothing. Looking for a shadowy glimpse of a life that no longer exists.

And here I am still in this puddle there in that alley and soon my car will be clean. And now I don't have that memory to refer back to. As time goes by, I will forget and I will have left is a few pictures to remind me and a place in my heart that will never heal. Longing for a baby that will never be.

6 comments:

  1. I think we are all crazy but you put it down into words beautifully.

    You have every right to be tired, I mean wow balancing work, grief, kids and pregnancy, that's alot! Wishing you some comfort xo

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's so true - Elizabeth lives on in strange details of my life life and mind, too, and sometimes I don't even realize why I cling to certain things.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love your post title. I think I'm probably pretty much bonkers too.

    You be absolutely exhausted. Being pregnant is tiring. Grieving is tiring. Add them both together and you get a whole heap of tired.

    I remember finding receipts of things that I'd bought just before the twins were born. Such a strange thing to see, they almost feel like they should be a portal back to that other time, when they were still alive and I didn't for one moment think that they might die. I can understand why you needed those leaves, those receipts. Maybe we are bonkers but at least we are bonkers in the same way?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well if you're crazy then I need to join your club... My phone is broken, and I need a new one, and as my contract is up for renewal, I could get one relatively cheaply... BUT, my phone has all my text messages right from the start of my pregnancy with Seamus. All the "I'm feeling so sick!" to "Can you pick me up some ice cream on your way home?" to "Wow, just got a HUGE kick!"... and I just don't want to let that go. I don't want those messages to disappear... I need to remember the details - it's all I have.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I still have the piece of paper the nurse gave me to write down the times of each contraction when I was in the hospital with Liam. We're left with so little of them that we hold onto every little bit don't we.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oh, I totally get this. There are so many little pieces of ephemera that I've clung to this past year - little souvenirs to mark this journey, to maybe turn around, someday, and lead me back to Nathaniel. And I keep collecting them.

    ReplyDelete