It’s another day.  Just another normal day.  Is it normal or is it just average?

I write in my head all the time.  I build these narratives in my head like I’m trying to explain to someone what it’s like to exist nine years and, I don’t know, over two hundred days and seven some hours after we learned that Hunter is dead.  I don’t know if I’m being defensive or if I think I’m explaining this to someone who wants to know, or just someone who is willing to listen.  Or perhaps I’m simply describing it to myself with the hope that by describing it, describing how it feels to live without my son, my fascinating, lovable, sometimes exasperating son. But It’s happening all in my head, all the time.

I feel like I’m living with an ever-present haze in the sky.  Ironically (or not?), there is a heavy haze in the sky today.  The forest fires that are burning in Canada and northern Minnesota have drifted down to Hudson, Wisconsin.  Yesterday, the haze smelled like a nearby campfire.  Today it smells as if we’re living next to a garbage incinerator.  It’s that noxious.  Air quality alerts abound.  Today we are staying in the house.

But really, this is every day for me – without the noxious smell.   Every day always seems like there is a haze that won’t let the sun through, covering me no matter how bright the sun or how hard the rain or snow.  It is akin to being a kid and building a fort in the living room out of a flat sheet that hangs over the backs of the couches, ottoman, and recliners, and maybe some stacks of couch cushions, and possibly the back of a tall chair from the kitchen, to raise the ceiling.  It’s like I live in this tent of grief.  I can enjoy being in the tent.  I can sometimes have fun, laugh, and do normal, everyday activities.  But that sheet is always there.  That haze is always there, somehow dulling my existence.  Ok, ok, I do break through.  I laugh deeply and that creates an opening in the haze, and I see the sun and I experience joy or happiness or just “‘ok-ness”. *Side note, I love that I seem to create new language, new vocabulary when I write.  What’s “ok-ness”?  Is it spelled correctly?  I guess I get to decide that.

Learning to live in this haze has been a real challenge.  That’s the understatement of the century.  It’s living with the knowledge that the pain will always be there.  Experiences that would or might have been fully joyful or fully whatever emotion-full are tamped down.  Or that there will always be this feeling of melancholy because it’s just not quite right.  It’s just – not – quite – right – knowing that your kid is not alive.  Perhaps it’s that he is not there to celebrate the occasion, experience the vacation, or see what life has become for his siblings and friends.  It’s just not quite right. And it will never be right.  It will be…whatever, but it won’t be right.

Ingrid

July 16, 2026
Nine years, 7 months, 12 days and 11 hours