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We got the question for the first time about a week ago: “Do you have plans for September 17?”

I don’t know what it says about where my head is, because my first instinct was to ask “Why? What’s up that day?” Like, even if that weren’t the first anniversary of Colin’s death during this time of pandemic, someone would be inviting us out to the hot new bar downtown or something.

I have to say I’m approaching this week with the weirdest sense of calm. I met my therapist yesterday (I’ll blog about that later) and had to tell him that, honestly, I’m more upset at this point about the impending end of my therapy sessions than I am about the birthday. A friend asked me if I’m bracing for Thursday and, again honestly (as if I’d be doing this blog to tell lies about how I feel) I’m not worked up about it.

I don’t think September 17 stands out for me as the day I lost my son because while, yes, that’s the day that stands on the death certificate, we’d lost him in such drips and drops for the weeks and months before that that he was all but gone by that day. Is the day I lost him the day we found out for sure that the tumor had returned? The day we threw the towel in and moved to the hospice? The last day I remember him really showing an interest in toys or books? I have no idea, but – at this moment – September 17 just seems like a day we have to note. Maybe I’ll have completely different thoughts about this in 48 hours. But, right now, it is a day that I will mark, not because I have to but because I want and need to do something to note the day. But I can’t claim that I’m worked up about it at this point.

That said, it is going to be a weird week. I’m absolutely not in love with the fact that this whole nightmare means my birthday will for the rest of my life fall two days before the anniversary of his death. It is odd thinking “It’s my birthday. Cake! Gifts!” knowing that we’ve got to brace for a complete turnaround in emotions in two days. I’m staying home most of this week, partially because I have so much vacation to burn off, but also because we’re not convinced that the kids won’t feel simply unable to cope with it all in the next few days. We already had them both home for parts of last week and the jury is still out on whether they were actually sick or whether the impending anniversary was starting to throw them off balance. We still haven’t decided if we’re going to pull them out of school on Thursday.

We really don’t know what we’re going to do. Germans have this concept of “Todestag,” which translates to nothing more than “Death Day.” But I don’t know what one is expected to do on this day, save go to the gravesite and remember the person. Which doesn’t seem like nearly enough. But I also don’t know how big of a production you want to make out of something like this. I suppose at the end we’ll just do what we think we can handle and that will end up being what is “right” for the day. But it’s a screwed-up way to spend a week.

We ordered the gravestone yesterday.

There was a last-minute rethink about the design of the stone which actually made things easier and means the stone will probably be standing in about a month, as opposed to 2-3 months.

There was also a last-minute rethink about the style of text for the stone which, impressively, cut the cost by about 1,000 euros. Who knew that laser etching was the cheaper version?

Also, we were warned that, when the stone is set up, there will be a phase of a couple of weeks while the foundation hardens. During this time, we are not to shake or push the gravestone in an effort to make sure that it is standing stably. The fact that he told us this makes me think it must happen, from time to time, which conjures up all manner of images of unfortunate graveyard experiences.

So, that’s that. That part of the grave might be done in a month, though I’m led to understand that the gardening is going to be a part-time job for the foreseeable future. There might also be a delay because the graveyard is doing some general landscaping near the site, and it would be better if that was finished before the stone gets put in. Whichever happens, we’ll share photos here when that’s done.

The possibility has come up that I might be done with therapy, at least for the time being, and I honestly don’t know what to think of that.

I never thought I’d be someone who would seek out therapy, much less find myself a little sad that it might be ending. But live through the last five years like I did and all sorts of things that never seemed possible suddenly become everyday. So, here we are. My therapist says that we have three sessions left before the insurance stops paying, so we have to figure out what to do.

Now, he hints that it might be possible to continue. My family doctor certainly thinks it wouldn’t be impossible to find a way to convince the insurance company to keep paying. I don’t know. I’ve never quite understood the rules for what the insurance will and won’t cover. When I decided I might want therapy, I started looking around for English-speaking therapists. Then the insurance company said ‘no silly’ and told me that they would assign one to me. I didn’t get along with her well, started referring to her as “Morticia” and then, when I asked if I could find someone on my own, the insurance said ‘sure.’

That was in 2017 and I don’t know how many sessions I started with and how many I could potentially still have if I hit the right bureaucratic levers. I’m not sure if therapy begun to discuss the way your child’s potential death could affect you needs to change, billing-wise, once you transition to the actual death of the child.

But I think it’s also a bit besides the point. I can’t decide if I still want therapy or not. The truth of the matter is, I don’t think there’s a “fix” for me. I’m behaving thoroughly rationally. My son died because life is unfair and our number came up, so I react by suffering a background level of anger higher than I ever imagined possible for me. All things considered, I think being a little more prone to anger than I was before isn’t the worst reaction to what happened. Especially since, as my therapist points out, I recognize the problem and try to keep it under control.

So, therapeutically, I feel like I’m in a dead end. There’s no therapy that’s going to make me stop missing Colin or stop feeling it was all so unfair or keep me from having a twinge every time I see a little boy who would be his age busily not dying. This is just what I do now.

To me, going to a psychiatrist is, essentially, talk therapy. I sit down. I lay out the mess that is my life. And he nods his heads at the right points and occasionally points things out from a different viewpoint. I get upset that I grumbled about going up to Colin’s room in the hospice the last night he had his eyes open. Dr. Kehrer points out that, no matter what, it showed Colin loved me that he wanted me up there one last time before he never opened his eyes again. It works for me.

And I know there’s any number of friends who will sit and listen to me or share emails with me or even read this blog. I know there are other non-professional resources out there for me. I don’t question most people’s willingness to help. But there’s also the truth that I don’t want to be that depressing guy who talks about his dead kid day in and day out. I don’t want to be that person. I don’t want to bum my friends out. I don’t want to suck all the joy out of the room every time I show up. So, I’d like to talk to my living friends about non-depressing matters, even if the state of the world makes it hard to pick out non-depressing things to talk about these days. And that’s why I’m not sure I’m ready to give up a therapist. At the end of the day, I like having someone around who’s paid to listen to me whine so I don’t have to lay this on other people morning, noon and night.

I suppose it’s also a bit of a double-hit, because the coronavirus crisis has also made it that much harder to attend the monthly meetings with the bereaved Dad’s group. Those were cancelled from March through May. They managed to resurrect them in the hospice garden for a month or two and I made it to one of those. But now they’ve moved back inside and, when I had the chance to go to one last week, I opted out of it, simply because sitting in a room with a handful of other guys seemed like too big a risk. This from a guy who’s worked up the courage to go a restaurant amid all this and sends his daughter across town by public transportation five days a week so she can attend her new high school. I know, none of it makes sense. And it’s probably based somewhat on the fact that I’m still on the fence about the Dad’s group. They all seem like nice guys, but there’s the fact that, no matter how good my German may or may not be, sitting around talking about my feelings with a group of people I barely know would be difficult in English. Throw in the hurdle of a foreign language and I feel I spent half the meeting not understanding what’s being said and half being frustrated because I can’t package my feelings into words in my second language half as well as I might like.

And, just like that, I’m going from having one professional support system and one non-professional support system to a world where I have neither. And I’m not panicky about that. As I said, I know I have people to whom I can speak. I’m just aware I might be starting a new chapter in this miserable story. And I’ve never been particularly great at change. I guess, if nothing else, I can start blogging even more. I guess, what it really came down to is that I wish I was the one deciding to give up my security blankets instead of the one having rugs being pulled out from under me. Then again, if I’ve learned nothing else from this experience, life seems to be far more about having rugs pulled out from under you than one would ever really like to think about.

Several months into the coronavirus, a friend pointed out that a) I liked writing and b) I had ample time for it during the lockdown, so why wasn’t I?

There was no way around it. Writing was probably healthier for me mentally than going through old clothes. And, honestly, I’d developed a bit of an unhealthy obsession with crosswords after a friend got me a trial Wall Street Journal subscription. So, I started writing a story I’ve had knocking around in my head for years. And then, because I still have this dream of being paid to write novels, I started poking around to find out how one would look into getting published.

A friend I asked suggested writing essays. This came only months after another friend had suggested a book about grief.

And I don’t know what to do with those suggestions.

It’s not that I don’t have things to write about. Honestly, give me a topic and I can probably whip out 750 words without trying too hard. I like writing. No, it’s not the actual production that’s the problem. It’s the marketing. Myself. The story. Colin’s story. I don’t know how to turn this mess I’m in into something that people would want to read. Which is where I stop and think “Well, of course, no one wants to read about a dying kindergartener.” So, it becomes a question of thinking of how to write something that people should read.

To me, if I was to embark on an essay/book about grief strategy, I feel I should have something useful to say. Here’s how this problem hit me. Here’s how I got through it. Here’s how you could get through it too. Or, here’s a problem wound up in the whole situation. Here’s a possible solution. There has to be, in my mind, a journey from this awful point to a place where I don’t necessarily solve the problem, but get us somewhere with a view of something helpful.

I don’t have that. I can write you up 25 essays tonight if you want, but the morals of the story will be “Childhood cancer is really awful,” or “It’s terrible watching a 5-year-old die” or “Nurses who sign up to help families with sick children shouldn’t quit without notice.” I kind of would hope that those lessons are self-evident.

I mentioned this to Christina and her response was to think about how everyone has reacted when we tell them the story. All the details about the diagnoses and the doctors who expect you to somehow keep a child calm while they’re sticking a needle into their skull and the nurses who disappear on you and the lady bringing you a wheelchair for your dying child, who asks right in front of him “So, how long does he have, anyways?” Everyone is horrified. And it’s not that we don’t expect this. But having lived through it, it’s almost like a twisted, bittersweet memory. We can sit on the patio and talk about the one awful nurse at the hospice or the other mother at the hospice who made the really good lasagna. And it’s not as if we look back at this fondly or have forgotten the pain. I think it would be how two tornado survivors would say to one another “And remember how the roof disappeared?”

And she’s right. If I wrote down the whole story – OK, I’ve done that already – it would probably terrify anyone who came into that cold, but it’s not like I take us anywhere. It’s not like I bring us to a place where we’ve learned or achieved anything.

Would that be enough? I can’t say I feel it would. One of the first things I did when I got back to work was to try to convince the health reporter to do a larger story about the problems with Germany’s home health care network. He seemed interested. Then Covid-19 came along and health care reporters haven’t had a lot of time for extra projects since.

So, that would leave me to tell the story. And I’m stuck with nothing other than the thesis of “Well, that was terrible.” If he had to die and I have to write about it, then I want it to be something good. If I’m forced to accept that life handed me some of the worst lemons there are and it’s now my job to make lemonade, I’d like it to be something useful, not just “Hey, look at this horror show.” I have to fight the fact that there’s a part of me that wants desperately to get published, but I can’t use my child’s death as an excuse to make that happen. I’ve got to find something to say about it that matters. I feel Colin deserves that much. So, until that point, I guess that’s what this blog is for.

I attended the second virtual funeral of my life last week. The story is not mine to tell: Suffice to say a relative I don’t know very well died and I felt I should be around to support the surviving spouse, if at least virtually.

The first virtual funeral was my Mom’s. She died while Christina was pregnant, which would have made getting out to the States for the ceremony difficult at the best of times. Upping the ante, Christina was pregnant with Colin and had just broken her ankle after a fall down the stairs, so I really wasn’t going anywhere. My brothers set up a Skype channel so I could watch the ceremony and then they took turns carrying me around the reception. At some point, the video went wonky. I could see people but they couldn’t see me, so any conversation I had involved them asking me questions and me typing answers. It was precisely that surreal.

As I remember, I turned it into a decent story about online funerals for my employer. And then the German service translated the story and there was a kerfluffle about the fact I’d written it in the first person. If I remember correctly, the end result was a story in German with someone else’s byline in which I was “interviewed” for the parts where I discussed my mother. And then I think they had to change the name, because of rules against employees being interviewed by the surface. If nothing else, it made the experience memorable.

This funeral also had several Colin connections. First of all, it was at the cemetery in Texas where my relatives set up a memorial bench in his honor. And the bench is surrounded by a playhouse that has a wi-fi connection, which proved important because – and maybe I’m wrong about this – the wi-fi connection was helpful in allowing this funeral to be livestreamed. Honestly, Christina and I had forgotten about the wi-fi until we were reminded about in during a conversation about the funeral. If nothing else, it was a good chuckle. Say what you want about Colin, but the boy appreciated a good, strong internet connection.

Additionally, the surviving spouse … let’s put it simply and say that this person and I don’t agree on anything politically. And, back in 2016, when Colin first got his cancer diagnosis and it seemed like a good idea to me to vent my anger by getting into Facebook fights, this relative and I went around and around a few times.

So, when I found out about the spouse’s impending death, I reached out. It was cancer, of course. I feel that cancer just surrounds me sometimes. But that’s not the reason I reached out. I figured this person knew their loved one was about to die and that was too similar to what we went through with Colin that I figured I needed to reach out and try to help a little. I really felt that I would have this. This might be something I would be good at. Maybe losing Colin like I did would help me be able to reach out to other people suffering.

Well, it turns out I’m not a natural at this. One of my first interactions almost resulted in a new Facebook fight about the coronavirus, but we backed off. And we’ve had some good emails. It’s not mine to say if they’ve been helpful or not. I’ve no idea if this is going to be a regular thing or not. I’m certainly not a smotherer: I really like my distance from people. And I think it wasn’t such a surprise to me that I had no words to salve the pain because, honestly, what do you say to someone watching their partner die? There’s no combination of words to take the sting off that.

I think all I got out of it was another realization that none of this makes you stronger or smarter or better. You just need to keep moving on, if not for yourself, then for the other people who rely upon you. Or perhaps there’s no message at all. I know I was glad for everyone who reached out to me when Colin died. I suppose it’s the least I can do to return the favor or pass it forward when I find the tables turned from now on.

This Sorrells household had its first coronavirus scare over the weekend. It turned out to just be a scare: The test came back negative. To be honest, we were never terribly concerned that the virus had hit us, but it seemed like it wouldn’t be responsible to ignore the one warning, so we hunkered down for the weekend (regrettably, with Christina’s nephew, who instead of seeing Berlin got to spend a lot of time enjoying our plot of land) and watched movies and played games. All things considered, there are many worse outcomes.

But it keeps making me think about this stupid virus and all of the responses people are displaying to it. We’ve commented to one another more than once what we would be doing right now if Colin were still with us and on a breathing machine. I imagine we’d be one of those families dipping every new purchase in hand sanitizer before we brought it inside the house. I imagine we’d be on edge every moment of the day.

But I try not to think too much about that. I suppose the pandemic has made me, yet again, more aware of Emma and Noah’s health. It’s not that I’m overly worried about them, but, if nothing else, Colin’s tumor taught me that there are no guarantees in life. Just because I lost one child to cancer doesn’t mean the other two get the consolation prize of a risk-free life. The goal is to see them to adulthood. But who knows if the next truck, virus or case of botulism doesn’t have one of their names on it?

More specifically, I wonder sometimes what happens if one of them ends up in the hospital. We can explain to them what’s going on, a luxury we never really had with Colin. We could count on them submitting to some medical procedures that Colin never allowed. We could count on somewhat less drama. But there would be no drama-free life. They’re 10 and 12 and both acting like they’re about to be 16, so just about any topic is an invitation to a fight or a debate or a round of 20 questions. And, having seen a lot of this up close, they ask questions. They are shockingly open about cancer and other diseases. Death is not an unfamiliar topic to them.

So the goal is to keep them out of the hospital. And I wonder what it would be like for me if none of this had ever happened. If I had three healthy children, would this be nothing more than an annoyance to me? Did it require me watching a child spend nearly a year with breathing assistance to make me certain that this isn’t what I want for me, my children or, really, anyone? Christina has threatened more than once to show a picture of Colin on a ventilator to people on public transportation not wearing a mask, a kind of cautionary tale against treating all of this nonchalantly. She hasn’t done so, to my knowledge. But then you ask: Why would a person need to be told this? Isn’t it intuitively clear that losing your ability to breathe is a dead end? Do you have to go through what we did to get it?

I know the majority of people don’t need the situation to be so bad before they get it. But I do wonder what’s going on with the rest. Personally, I think if I was in the same room with a breathing machine, I’d have some kind of flashback. I just wish I could get a few other people to have a small dose of my healthy fear of these things. Honestly, if I could lose the images in my head of a pre-schooler struggling to breathe and foist them on someone who doesn’t see the problem, I’d do so in a heartbeat.