Hey, did you know there is some virus out there making everybody hella sick? Kidding. Most people who know me, know that I'm pretty adamant about people keeping their asses home right now. People are still leaving, despite the warnings to stay in place. Just do it. Don't make people beg. Don't assume your "reason" for getting out or seeing your friend is more important than someone else's. Just. Don't.
But actually, that isn't what I want to talk about right now. We all have our own ways of coping with our feelings during this pandemic, and I think writing is going to have to be mine. The thing is, like most experiences I have now, my feelings are maybe slightly different than the norm. I actually feel more normal right now than I have in about 8-10 years. While I realize that is an odd thing to say, the truth is, I've felt outside of the "norm" for so long that I didn't recognize "normal" when I started seeing it. In light of this insane turn in our daily lives, people seem to be more in tune with brokenness than usual.
Here's the thing....I learned a long time ago that we don't get answers all the time. That is something that we say to ourselves, regardless of whether or not we actually KNOW it to be true. When Easton first got sick, the hours before our world turned upside down, my life was incredibly, blissfully boring. In fact, I was complaining about what I was going to do with extra kids in my house all weekend. Little did I know, that beautiful, privileged "complaint" would be my last. I put my healthy, happy curly-headed boy to bed just as I did every night. When Jeff brought him to me at 3am, with the start of the first seizure, everything I knew about medicine, about the world, vanished right before my eyes.
When we loaded onto that ambulance, I "knew" it was scary in the moment, but we'd fix it. It would be fine. Man was this an awful thing to go through, but of course we'd look back someday and talk about the terrible night we had. Even as they moved him to an ER bed and started throwing IV lines in and pouring medications into his still seizing body....some part of the old me "knew" it would be ok. Even as they handed me scissors and I cut his red race car pajamas from his twitching body....I "knew". And even as his eyes closed and the tube was put down his throat, and the airplane landed, and I ran next to him to a place neither of us had ever been and they shouted orders all around us...I "knew".
That was the first day of my new life. The day I watched test after test after test, and stick after stick after stick wield no results, is what started my spiral into this new reality. You can have the best doctors in the world, and they can look into every possibility, and you still will not get an answer. When we began the long road to recovery, I did every single thing I could think to try. Never underestimate the power of a desperate mother trying to save her child. But it wasn't enough. It never would have been enough. Didn't I deserve for my baby to live? I tried so hard! Didn't I DESERVE for my prayers to work?? Because I DID pray. But no. The answer is no. And that's not a negative outlook or a defeated attitude. It's just true. Sometimes things just happen. Sometimes people get sick. Sometimes people die, despite your faith, despite your propensity to care for them, despite your NEED for them to stay.
So, having learned this lesson several years ago, every single day of my life since that day has been different. And right now, people seem to understand some of that on a small scale. After I watched my son die, I did get up the next day and the sun did rise. But it didn't matter anymore. Every day was the same. He was still dead EVERY SINGLE DAY. There wasn't anything I could do to change that. My new reality was one in which I could try with everything I had to get the world to bend to my will, and still not get what I wanted, or I could simply do what I could each day to make it to the next one. Right now, that's what's going on in healthcare. We are so used to making decisions based on scientific fact, on studies that give us answers. We don't have any of those right now. We don't have any definitive answers and the healthcare field does not do well without concrete answers. "This" is why we do "this". Because of this, the whole world is going a little crazy. At first we all "knew" everything would be fine. We would certainly talk about our terrible time someday, but we "knew" it would get better. As more and more people became ill, and we realized that this wasn't something that was giving us concrete answers, we became frantic in our pursuit of the elusive. Some have now settled into the feeling of living life in constant "fight or flight". We are worried at all times. We are neurotic with our hand-washing and our distancing. We are doing all the RIGHT things. So, the thing is, once you've lived in this headspace for so long, something shifts. I've heard so many people say, jokingly, that they just want to be drunk to escape for awhile. I don't think this is a joke for many. THIS I understand. THIS is exactly how I feel most days. And it isn't just drinking, it is anything that helps you to escape your reality for awhile. Because right now reality hurts. Reality is scary. And for just a MOMENT we want reality to go the hell away. YES! This is every day. THIS is why when asked if I fear death, I will always say no. I'm not suicidal (anymore). I'm just tired. I'm exhausted from living in a world that is constantly spinning in a direction that does not bring my son back.
I do live with more gratitude for moments that I would have missed before. I recognize the BIG that lives in the "small". And although that may sound lovely, I assure you that we are not made to CONSTANTLY live here. It makes you an outsider. You won't react to things the same way others do. For example, lots of graduations have been cancelled. While I know this feels like a rite of passage or something that is deserved, I can't get there. People who don't get to graduate will likely continue living and making new memories, and that will eventually be a blip in the radar of their life. So no, I'm never going to be able to cry about something like that. But that doesn't mean I don't want that for other people. I truly want others to be able to pour out big, crocodile tears over all kinds of milestones that normal people experience.
Do I want every person I know to lose a child so that they understand how I feel? God no. Of course I don't. But those fleeting moments of being finally understood, I have to admit, are welcome ones. So once again, my broken mother heart responds in a completely bizarre way to the world around me. In a world where we have never been more alone and disconnected from one another, I finally have small moments of connection.
Despite all of this, I don't want every person to know this way of life forever. I want people to go back to taking life for granted. I want people to whine about the mundane. I want someone to complain about hospital food because everything else in their hospital experience is going so well that they notice THAT. So stay the hell home. While this is a nice place to visit, believe me, you don't want to live here forever.
