I haven’t been getting a whole lot of sound sleep
lately. I have no problem falling
asleep; it’s the staying asleep part that gives me trouble. I wake up several times a night. Most of the time I fall right back
asleep, but sometimes it takes a while.
Most of the time I’m not thinking of anything in particular and can’t
really pinpoint specifically what woke me up. In general, I probably don’t need to spell out what is
waking me up. It’s Max. My thoughts of him, my dreams of him,
my absolute obsession with him.
Sometimes I wonder when every single thought in my head will center on
things besides just Max. Then I think,
a little panicky, what if it never
stops? And then I feel like a jerk
for wanting to think about other things besides Max. But I think I deserve that. The truth is, not every thought I have of Max is wonderful
and precious and comforting. A lot
of them are bad, actually, because they mostly involve the one thing that can’t
be avoided: the fact that he is
dead. I see a mom in the grocery
store pushing her little baby around while her older child walks beside them,
and all I see is me not getting to do
that. I see Ethan gaze at my friend’s
newborn baby, and all I see is him not
getting to do that with Max anymore.
It doesn’t matter what I see, really, because I don’t see what’s really
there; I see what’s been taken from me and from Max. I teach my students a new word, and all I think of is that
Max will never get to learn that word.
I put a sticker on Ethan’s sticker chart, and I think that Max will
never, ever get a sticker. He’ll
never taste the lollipop that Ethan got from the nice cashier at Trader Joe’s
tonight, he’ll never get a birthday card with his favorite animal on it, he’ll
never make us proud by sleeping in his own bed and pottying in the big boy
toilet. I know it sounds selfish
of me, and I’ll be the first to admit that. It is selfish, but grief is selfish. You don’t have time to worry about
other people when you’re falling apart yourself.
On
Friday night, I had another sleepless night. We were in Tulsa at Scott’s parents’ house to celebrate
Scott’s birthday and his mom’s. I
was exhausted in the way that all teachers are on Friday nights. It had been a hard week too in the way
that some weeks are worse than others when you’ve just lost your son. Anyway, I went to bed about 10:30 and
fell asleep quickly. And then I
started waking up. Every 30
minutes, almost on the dot. I
think some of my restlessness had to do with Saturday being the 10th,
three months past the day that Max died.
Some time around 1:00, I started to imagine the things that I would have
been doing exactly three months prior.
At 1:00 am, I would have been almost home from the KC Sporting game that
I wish I had never gone to. At
1:30 am, I would have been getting into bed and kissing Max one last time. I remember looking at him before I fell
asleep that night. I remember
smiling at how beautiful and perfect he was. I remember feeling so lucky. At 2:30 am, I would have been sleeping soundly. At 3:00 am, Max could have already been
dead, but I didn’t know it yet. At
6:00 am, I did, but I wasn’t letting myself believe it. I was giving him CPR. I was trying to stay calm, but I
eventually started screaming. I
knew what was going on, but I didn’t know. At 6:00 am, I was blowing air into
Max’s mouth and willing it to do something. I was begging it to work. It came right back out, and I knew, but
I kept breathing anyway. I
couldn’t give up. At 6:00 am, I
was using my fingers to do chest compressions on my little 12-pound baby boy’s
chest and trying not to hurt him.
I didn’t want to crack a rib; that wouldn’t be fun to recover from! Of course, I knew that there would be
no recovering from anything, but I didn’t really know. I just kept
on. My hands and my breath and my
mommyness would save him! I made
him; surely I could save him! I
think this is what they call “magical thinking,” and I’m here to tell you that
it doesn’t work, no matter how much work and heart you put into it.
I
woke up at 6:22 in the guest room at Jim and Betty’s. I looked down at Ethan, asleep in his little pod on the
floor next to the bed. It was
exactly where Max’s pack and play would have gone, exactly where he should have
been sleeping. I thought about
what I would have been doing three months ago, and I felt like I knew exactly
what I was doing. There’s no way
to know for sure, but I feel confident of it. I was sitting on the stairs in my house. Two or three police officers stood at
the foot of the stairs, leaning against the wall, probably feeling incredibly
awkward. I sat staring at Max’s
body on our living room floor. A
baby blanket covered him. I had
gotten the blanket out just the day before to play with him on the floor. That is the definition of irony: a baby blanket meant for play covering
a dead baby’s body. How
cruel. I sat on the stairs shaking
my head. My signature move when
I’m crying is to fan my face as if the act itself will somehow erase what is
making me cry in the first place.
I didn’t fan my face that day.
I let the tears come, and I shook my head. I’m not going to say that it felt like a bad dream or that
it just couldn’t have been true. I
knew it wasn’t a dream, and I knew it was true. But I willed it to
not be true. I willed it to just go away. Just like I willed my hands and breaths
to save Max, I willed the world to take back what it had done to me. Unfortunately, this was just as
effective as making someone take back something hurtful they’ve said. You can’t take it back. It’s always there. So, maybe I shouldn’t feel so bad about
wanting to be able to think of things besides Max. I don’t know if it will ever happen, but I’ll deal with it
either way. I owe that much to
Max.
I
don’t remember going back to sleep after 6:22 on Saturday. I had a horrible day as far as days go,
but I was surrounded by good people who care about me. Seeing babies was harder for me that
day. Honestly, seeing people was
just plain hard for me. The three-month
“anniversary” of Max’s death hit me harder than any others so far. Maybe because we’re all going back to
“normal.” Actually, we aren’t, the
rest of the world is. I do know
that I’ve accomplished some things that I didn’t think were possible in the
past three months. I’ve gone an
entire day without crying. I’ve
had fun with friends. I’ve done a
pretty good job at work. I’ve held
a couple of babies. I’ve come to
terms with the fact that I might not have another boy. I’ve thought of Max and smiled. I’ve loved Ethan and Scott and my
family and my friends with all of my heart, even though I thought it might
never work again. I’ve done a lot
of things that seem small, but they are the things that really matter when you
look at the big picture.
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