I am silently counting down in my head. How many days until Teddy has been dead longer than he was alive? How does the world keep turning? Every night Logan declares, "The sun keeps going down?!" Every night. And our answer is always the same, "Yes, it does. And then it comes back up in the morning." It's just how it is. No matter what is going on in any of our lives, the world keeps spinning, time keeps ticking. Some of us live through one moment to the next, and others of us don't.
I have been struggling a lot with "meaning making" lately. I am taking a class on bereavement, and this is part of one of Worden's "tasks in grief." No, this is not a "stage" on the grief timeline. There is no timeline. There is no linearity to grief at all. Worden argues that to integrate a death or a loss into our lives, there are certain tasks that we must work through to keep living and find ourselves again. Meaning making comes from the spirituality aspect of the 4th task, which is to "find an enduring connection with the deceased while embarking on a new life."
So let's unpack this. Somehow, I have to figure out how to honor my child and put him into a different emotional zone so I can live my life. When I look at it this way, this is really the only way I can effectively live day-to-day, moment-to-moment. If I am stuck with my emotions that Teddy is gone, he died, he will always be dead, he is never coming back, I won't be able to get the fuck out of bed. In fact, there are some days when the best I can do is just sit and stare blankly off into space while these thoughts creating a tornado of my brain. In order to get up and do the dishes, I have to focus. I have to force myself to come back to the present, to look at my reality, at what is right in front of me and deal with it.
There is another theory about phases (slightly different from Kübler-Ross's stages, but still misleading) of grief- in her theory, Sanders has 6 phases. The third is "conservation-withdrawal." I know I am kind of stuck here most days. Most days I can handle a little bit, but I can get quickly overwhelmed. For instance, today at the park I was able to see a mother who had been pregnant all fall, and now had her tiny newborn covered in a stroller. That didn't overwhelm me today, but some days it could send me into a tailspin...
So let's get back to meaning-making. I decided last summer that I wanted to study thanatology so I could be there for people like me. Be there for the difficult times when the rest of society turns away. To keep being there as the support of the first few days and weeks goes away. To witness unbearable pain, because it was all I could feel. I never thought of it in terms of making meaning out of Teddy's death. There simply is no meaning there. He died. For no reason. We won the shittiest lottery in life. I knew I couldn't just go back to putting on ballets for (mostly) rich, white audiences. It just didn't mean anything to me anymore (and that's certainly not to say that ballet is meaningless. Quite the opposite, for those who enjoy it, and certainly not for the dancers/artists! They are completely magical people whom I have always respected!).
As time has gone on, though, I have begun to understand that I am doing these things because of Teddy. Because he died. Because he lived. I still hate the term, but the reality is that humans need a reason to get out of bed. This is not unique, it is how we are wired. When Teddy was alive, I was so excited to get out of bed in the morning to spend time with him and Logan. Now I get up and am happy to be with Logan, but that drive and excitement is gone. I wish it could be different, especially for Logan. As time keeps grinding on, I am finding it easier to get up, and I am shocked I can be excited for things, but it's true. Granted, they have to be pretty big things, but it's there. A slight willingness to partake in life again. I can tell you I am really excited to start my MSW at Hunter in the fall!
So today is 14 months since my reason to get out of bed has been gone. February kind of messes up our month count because of the 28/29 detail, so I have decided March 1st is the anniversary date. Count down to 15 months and 6 days. I don't want to see the day when Teddy will be gone longer than he was alive. I am not supposed to be alive to see that day. We never expect our children to be the ones to die first, and especially for no goddamn reason. Meaning-making. Blech.
This is what I used to have the honor to wake up to:
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