Church and my state

            It’s not that I gave up blogging there, it’s that I very consciously didn’t want to give up sleep and keeping a halfway organized household.  Also, because he can’t defend himself, I’ll blame Murphy, because it is very hard sandwiching in dog-walking time on top of work, other professional development, writing for fun, having time with the kids and, oh yes, sleep.

            I suppose there was also an element of … getting bored with the blog is far from the right term.  But, I suppose, as a writer, I want something different week after week than writing “I miss my son.  It messes with my head not having my son around.  Pretty much every other day something comes along and hits me upside the head and shocks me into realizing just how much this has shaken my life to the roots.  It is astounding that I need those reminders.”  And I know that I write more than that, but it does feel a little repetitive somehow, the odd gravesite redecorator aside.  And thank you to everyone who reacted to that.  It is good to know that we had not missed the trend of randomly redecorating other people’s graves and that we were, indeed, right in believing that this was way-off-the-charts behavior.  Also, since no one else has heard of it, it seems that we might have found an original sin.  A truly original one.  Eddie Izzard would be pleased.

            But it feels like the things popping up in my life to remind me of him are popping up with more frequency.  Almost like the universe is telling me “Blog already!”

            Like, this weekend, we went to a first communion ceremony, because two members of our Catholic family group were having their big day.  Right at the start of the ceremony – I mean, I think we were on the second song – one of the kids set to get his first communion just keeled over.  I didn’t see it, because we were pretty far in the back.  Honestly, I thought a rack of camera equipment had fallen over.  But it soon became clear that one of the kids had fainted.  A ton of people rushed to him.  The priest urged everyone to be calm.  The organist kept playing because, back to the congregation, he had no idea what was going on until the first announcement came through.  Eventually, they carried the kid out of the church.  I heard he’s fine, but he was taken to hospital.

            Of course, the health of this kid is the important thing.  This is what we should all be worrying about.  But, this being my blog, I was more astounded by what it did to me.  A kid collapses in church … and it’s not like I assumed a worst case scenario.  And it’s not as if I had a panic attack.  But my head started going into overdrive.  A child has fainted?  And they’re not delaying the mass?  They’re expecting us to just go on?  With all the singing and standing and kneeling and transubstantiation that comes with the event?  Is that what you do when a child gets sick?  Is that what everyone did when Colin get sick?  Did everyone’s life just go on?

            Of course everyone’s life just went on.  It’s not like we could have expected people to give up their lives and jobs and taking care of their own children because our kid was sick.  But there was always a bitterness that everyone else got to wake up and go to work while we were in the ICU or in the hospice or in the nightmare of the home health care.  And now I was wondering what his family was thinking as they were running around, getting his stuff, getting him to hospital?  Were they mad at the rest of us for staying?  A lady in front of me got up and said we should be sending the kid our love.  Should I have gotten up and said, dear God, we can’t do this?  We can’t go on with our lives if, God forbid, we just saw a kid experience his first symptoms of a brain tumor!

            Of course, there’s no reason to think it was anything like that.  Odds seem greater the kid didn’t hydrate or something.  But it’s where my thoughts went.  O the one hand, I understand.  There were about two dozen other kids with relatives who had just come in from all over Germany for what could very well have been the first family gathering in two years thanks to the pandemic.  It’s not like you could just ask them to all go home and reschedule for a few weeks from now.  I get it.  But there was a part of me that wanted that to happen.  There was a part of me that just wanted to leave the church.  The main thing that kept me there was Noah, because I didn’t want to have to explain to him why I was leaving or make him see what I was thinking.  So, I stayed and had a very tiny meltdown and then pretended to listen to the rest of the service.  I mean, on a good day, I only follow about 40-50% of a church service in German.  Today, my only real takeaway was that it was a special day.

            I’m glad we went, because every little trip to church or meeting with neighbors feels like reclaiming something normal after the last two years.  I mean, I recently made a point to some friends that, everyone else is trying to recover from the last two years.  The four of us had the year of nightmare right before it.  We’re extra out-of-practice at being in normal surroundings.  So, it’s good to get out.  It’s good to see people.  But it’s also a reminder that every time we head out, we run a risk that something is going to show up and shove all the bad memories in our face, no matter what we were doing.

            And maybe it’s just a reminder that I need to keep on blogging, because I have to put these thoughts somewhere.