Home alone

            I’ve reached the interesting stage of blogging where I want to write, but don’t really have anything to say. 

            Christina and the kids were just gone for four days on an improvised first communion getaway.  This should have happened months ago, but then, so should the first communion have.  Everything is on a slippery schedule due to the coronavirus, but the religion teacher saw an opportunity to head off with the kids as part of a larger children’s retreat, so that’s how Emma went along for the ride.  And then they needed an extra chaperone, plus the kitchen at the facility couldn’t guarantee Noah-friendly meals, so Christina came along as his personal caterer.  And suddenly I was alone for four days.

            Two things.  I love being alone.  Not for excessive amounts of time: When I went to Sydney for a month in 2018, that was definitely about three weeks too much of alone time.  But a couple of hours where I can read and listen to music?  It’s kind of the gold standard for me.  The other thing: I do hit my limits.  It’s not as if I get panicky being by myself, but I did reach the point last night where I forgot that I’d left a window open and, upon discovering it, briefly convinced myself that I was about to become a victim of some serial murderer who hunts down middle-aged expats.  Yes, it’s possible I’ve watched too many episodes of “Dexter.”

            But it’s different this time because you no longer really feel alone in the house.  I don’t believe that Colin comes and talks to me.  At the same time, I don’t not believe that either.  So, I can go hours at a time not thinking anything is wrong with my life and then I wander past his picture or some of his toys and there’s the moment where you think maybe it was all a bad dream and he’s just quietly playing in the corner.  Except he’s not. 

            I had to look after the grave a little bit while Christina was gone, which is not my favorite job.  I don’t have a green thumb.  I still haven’t figure out what to do there.  And there’s the fact that I felt like I was going to pass out the last time I was there by myself.  But I had told myself I should go.  I made a short stop on Thursday morning, and promised the plants I’d be back one more time with water.  And then I passed the bookshelf on Saturday and it did feel like it might be a good time to read to him again.  I looked at the Curious George books and told Colin I wasn’t ready for that yet.  So, we settled on “Yertle the Turtle.”  It went better this time, in the sense that I wasn’t an emotional heap at the end.  But I still don’t know how much I enjoy my time there.

            You have too much time to think about things in times like this.  Listening to Loretta Lynn singing “God makes no mistakes” and stifling the urge to shout back something rude at the stereo.  You start wondering about alternate universes.  Would I have spared him all this, even if it meant he’d never existed?  Would I have traded five largely fun years away if it meant he didn’t have to die like that?  I just don’t know.

            I had something of a breakthrough at therapy last week.  It wasn’t a made-for-TV moment, particularly since we were doing it online.  But the doctor asked me to think about how I’d handled his dying and what I would have liked to have done differently.  Then he asked, given my hangups and  tics, what could I have realistically done better.  From that perspective, if you accept that you’re kind of a mess under perfect circumstances, as we all are, then it seemed like I held myself together pretty well.  It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best I could do.  I mean, I’m not done with therapy by a long shot, but it was the best I’d felt after a session in ages.

            I’ll have something more coherent next time.  I just kind of felt like writing today, and, I guess, the beauty of a blog is that it doesn’t all need to be perfect.