I woke from my Saturday afternoon nap in that groggy, half-in-a-dream still state with a bit of a headache, considering if I wanted to lift my head or fall back into the bliss of my dream. My dreams are almost always a life where our older boys are between two and ten years old. I’m simultaneously loving being with them and in a constant state of alert because I know that Hunter is going to die. I just don’t know when, and I have to keep him alive and bask in the joy of living with these beautiful kids.

But that’s not what this is about, this entry today. It’s about the realization that since Hunter died, it’s like the dial on my emotions has been turned up, and I feel everything, yes, everything, more deeply. For example, the nap from which I’d just woke included a glance at the back of my gently snoring and napping (well, maybe not gently snoring but definitely napping) head of my husband. His hair was soft and slightly curly in a shiny silver color (as Hunter called it) interspersed with bits of black. My eyes water as I look at his head, and I feel the absolute deepest love for him. I cherish his now silver hair and the fact that I can so deeply sleep beside his gentle snores in the middle of the afternoon. I think of this man’s massive head of wavy black hair when I first met him and how that drew me to him. I loved his wild dark hair, and yet I cherish him with his short silver wavy locks.

It’s like I don’t have regular-size feelings anymore. I have feelings that have been cranked up by the dial that regulates my feelings, the emotion-o-meter. It’s now perpetually turned to a higher setting. Every emotion is so much more intense. I didn’t know pain before Hunter died. Well, I did.

I knew pain when Alexandra, our first baby, died. Then, I felt like I was crawling out of my skin. I felt like a wild squirrel stuck in a cage, incessantly trying to jump and claw its way out. There was no way to relax, no way to get comfortable, no way to come to grips with the reality of not having my baby. Eventually, that feeling and all the other feelings of pain and grief decreased and normalized. The intensity reduced because I got help and I worked through my suffering. But really, it went away because we had Hunter.

Hunter was our Pinnochio – a real, live boy. The exaltation we experienced with his being became our focus. Did we continue to mourn Alex? Yes. Definitely, but it was a more manageable grief, like many people describe. It could still be intense and terrible, but the frequency of those painful times decreased. Instead of hourly, they reduced to daily and weekly and monthly, and… you get it. And, we had our distraction. We had Hunter to take care of twenty-four hours a day.

This time, when Hunter died, there was no distraction. In fact, as I reflect on the last almost seven years, I see that almost instantly, I knew that I had to face my grief head-on, and it was going to be terrible. It was going to be terribly difficult, and it has been. It’s been a lot of damn work with the primary reason that my emotion-o-meter is stuck on a high setting. I’ve found that you can’t replace your emotion-o-meter. You can provide a bit of damping with professional help, medication, and friends. But you really can’t fix it. I have to live at this higher level of emotional state. That doesn’t mean I must express those emotions; I’m not at their mercy (always). It takes a ton of time, effort, rest, and knowledge to feel everything deeply and stay sane.

What do you think?
Ingrid

November 11, 2023
6 years and 343 days