Coping

“Now that things are calming down and the girls are back in school, let’s go have breakfast and go for a drive.”

It was my dad’s tradition: breakfast and a drive, meandering around the mountain roads, looking for pretty places and chatting about anything and everything.  We’d been doing it since I was little.  Even now, at 37, we were going to go do the same, two weeks ago last Friday.

Instead, I spent that Friday in a funeral home, discussing his ashes.  He had a heart attack the previous Wednesday, the day after I talked to him and told him I couldn’t wait for breakfast.  It was so fast that there was nothing they could do.

It doesn’t feel real, most days.  Time feels liquid and vague, and it’s like the wires that form my thoughts have been cut, forming half finished thoughts and projects.  I don’t cry as much today as I did.  Everyone is fed, clothed, to class and work on time, and bills get paid.  I have a new and weird fixation on organizing closets; trying to draw order from chaos, I guess.  I have lots of nightmares and old PTSD induced flashes.

The EMTs, police officers and the victim’s advocate (a lovely volunteer the city sent) that were there that night were all impossibly kind and gentle.  My family, friends, neighbors and community jumped in and brought us meals, came and sat with me and talked, showed up on my doorstep to ask how I was.  My neighbors are all wonderful cooks!  My daughters’ teachers have taken great care of them and watched out for them.  One of our neighbor’s children wrote a beautiful card for my kids inviting them to play whenever they want.    The messages and stories people send about my dad are amazing and I’m collecting them all.  I’m trying to respond to everyone but it’s slow.  I’m overwhelmed by the generosity and love being shown to me.

Me?  I’m coping.  People tell me I’m coping well.  I don’t know what that means, exactly.  I once saw a man throwing himself into a shutter over a store in Japan and screaming; maybe if that’s the bar for coping badly, then I’m coping well.  Maybe it means that I’m able to get up and go every day.   That everything important gets done.  That when I meet people I can still smile; I am happy to see them, even if I can’t talk much.

That’s the biggest thing, talking.  It’s like there’s a block there.  I can talk about him extensively with my husband, mom and kids, but otherwise I choke up.  Emotions like anger, despair and fear swirl in and out without warning.  It’s like a hole was ripped in my life and I can’t figure out how to fill it.

I know that it gets better with time.  People survive it every day and we will too.  All those things are true.  But today, there’s just a big rip in my life and a vast expanse of cloudy, disconnected time and thoughts.  I miss him so much.