Yes, there I go again. I have a million or even one thought in my head, and when I sit down to write – poof! – it’s gone.

Maybe this is due to my age. Maybe. I think it’s likely due to the trauma of Hunter dying. His death holds a place in my brain that not only takes up precious brain capacity but also seems to be able to dump on other thoughts. That big black, foggy spot of grief can usurp any other neural connections.

Sometimes, sometimes, I can think straight. Sometimes, I am clicking on all cylinders. More now than before. But it’s been seven flipping years (almost), and I’m truly dumbed down. I let less in and expect less of myself. I had to, simply to survive. Not kidding. There’s too much going on in the ‘Hunter grief/trauma’ space in my brain.

I’ve worked super hard to get some semblance of a life back. I stopped working. I slept. I exercised. I learned how to practice yoga and meditation (and I do it). I journal. I go to therapy. I take medication. I lowered my expectations of myself.

I’m not saying that it’s not better. It is. It’s much better. I don’t have as many open wounds. I used to feel like I was walking around with open [emotional] sores. Imagine you have an open wound on your forearm without a bandage on it. You can ding that puppy anytime and very easily. Now imagine those wounds all over your body. Ok, it’s metaphorical, but you get it.

This is now. Today, my face is covered in a rash – hives around my eyes and really all over my face. Why? Hell, if I know. It could be a food allergy. It’s more likely anxiety. My husband just found out he has a tumor on his kidney. No more information than that so far. Even though this is considered urgent, he can’t get an appointment with a specialist for three weeks. I’m not one to get all wound up. I lead a half-billion-dollar pharmaceutical business, for crying out loud. I know how to stay calm. But now I know that you can end up on the other side of the statistics. So they say it’s a one-in-a-million probability. Well, once you’ve been that ‘one’ instead of the other nine-million nine-hundred thousand nine-hundred ninety-nine people, you know that you’re not safe. It could be you, whether the ‘one’ is a bad thing (e.g., cancer) or a ‘good’ thing (e.g., winning the lottery).

So, life can be a little scarier after you lose a child. It’s not rational. You’ve got the same probability of any one outcome as anyone else. Having something bad happen doesn’t doom you, but it doesn’t keep you safe, either. This wasn’t our first experience with child loss (I’ll go into that some other time). Having lost one child didn’t make us immune from losing another – no matter how much effort we put into keeping them alive, raising them well, and being good parents. We didn’t get a “pass” on life’s difficulties. They came even after we lost our first child, even after we lost our second child, even after my husband was diagnosed with chronic illness, and even after having one of our kids struggled through a gender transition (we strongly supported them, by the way) and certainly, we won’t necessarily get a pass now with this tumor. We might. I’m still hopeful that we might get a pass. It might only be a tumor and not cancerous. But it might not be only a tumor.

So, maybe not so unexpectedly, I got hives on my face. That’s hives on my face right where everyone can see them. The body keeps the score. You know the book?

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van der Kolk, MD

I end here today (god, that sounds like a preacher).

Ingrid

November 25, 2023
6 years and 357 days