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There’s always the temptation to start these entries with “The weirdest thing about life like this…,” but I realize that’s pointless. There are so many facets of my life I would never wish on anyone (and there’s plenty of good too, just to be clear about that).

Like, I have recurring dreams where I’m trying to meet a woman because I need a mother for my children. They’re never that interesting, beyond the fact that I never find anyone. And that’s the point when I wake I wake up and realize the problem isn’t a lacking mother (she’s right next to me), but a lacking child. It’s not as if I wake up crying, but it certainly colors the rest of the day.

But I wanted to write about headstones again, because we’ve now reached this odd stage of grieving where we’re essentially shopping for headstones every time we come anywhere near a cemetery. We did this again on Saturday, when we stopped in the town where Christina’s Dad grew up as we continue driving around southern Germany. The cemetery is across the street from where her Dad’s house used to be and there’s a few relatives buried there, including her grandparents. The kids have never been. I was only there once, and that was 2003.

So, we started looking around, and no one made a conscious decision, but I’d say within minutes of us having found the grandparents’ grave and paying our respects, we had spread throughout the cemetery and were critiquing all the stones. Not in a catty way. But in a “that’s a nice idea” and “that wouldn’t be right for Colin at all” kind of way. And you have this odd mismatch as a parent where you think “Isn’t it great that the kids are helping us out here” except, you know, we’re doing it for their brother’s grave.

As you can guess, we still haven’t picked one. We’ve entered negotiations with the one stone cutter about the headstone, but they have two that look very similar and we, as a family, can’t quite get behind one design. Beyond that, Christina is wondering if we can add our own embellishments to the design. I won’t lie: There is a big part of me that just wants to buy this stone and be done with the whole thing, but I understand also that we have to get it right for Colin and for us, so that leaves us in shopping mode for a while. It’s just nothing I’d ever thought I’d be shopping for with my kids, for one of my kids.

We’re at Christina’s parents for a few days as we do the best we can in terms of vacationing during this time of coronavirus. It didn’t really dawn on me until we got here that it had been more than two years since we had been here as a family, which meant that we were a family of five last time we were here, in April 2018.

Since then, I made a pit stop here with the kids in early 2019 while en route to a vacation with them while Christina and Colin were stuck at the rehab clinic. And the kids came here for a while last summer because we wanted to get them out of the hospice for a while. And Christina came and visited her parents in February without us. But it wasn’t until we were walking down the main drag of Freising yesterday that it dawned on me that the reason it felt like so many of the stores I knew were gone and so many of the stores that are here are new is because I haven’t been here in so long.

It’s no one’s fault, but it’s a very limited vacation. The pool is open but, honestly, I’m leery of going. Many regional attractions are shut down or limited. We’re thinking about taking the kids downtown for ice cream tonight or tomorrow and even that feels like a logistical hurdle with face masks and social-distancing.

But it’s the memories that are standing out mostly. I had not expected this, since I’ve been dealing with the memories of Colin for nine months now. And we weren’t here with him all that often. But it was enough. So, when I walked by the playground yesterday I remembered the few times I was there with him. The grandparents have pictures of him up and they are not the same ones we have up, so that’s another moment to stop and take in. I see the whole house differently than I used to. It makes me wonder, should vacations ever become a thing again, how much of a getaway they’ll be. The kids want to go to Denmark again, where we traveled with Colin in 2015 and 2017. Do I really want to do that to us again? There’s so much of the world we haven’t had a chance to see thanks to the madness of the last five years, but will that feel like we’re just avoiding his memory? It’s all so hard to say.

Maybe other places will have less resonance than Freising. It doesn’t help that we’re debating the details of his gravestone while we vacation without him. It doesn’t help that we’re trying to decide if we should run by the bank here, where Opa set up a college fund for him and where they still haven’t managed to close it down, despite the boatload of paperwork they had us sign months ago. I guess very little of it helps.

We’re going to go and try to see an old Roman fort in a little bit. We’ll see how it goes. And then the rest of the vacation will beckon. Stay safe everyone.

            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.

A small note: I realized this morning that, for the first time in 2-3 years, we have no outstanding medical bills. Everything has been paid and the insurance companies have reimbursed us for everything.

It’s not much, but I thought it was a moment of Sorrells family history that deserved comment.

So, I had a bad day this week, and I’ll post about that later, and in the middle of it, several acquaintances on Facebook piped up about the George Floyd funeral. My feelings about the Floyd case and what I thought of the contents of their post aside, the talk of funerals layered on top of what was already a crummy day. And, since I write to get things out of my head, I wrote up a response.

And then I thought about it. I’ve been trying very hard not to be that guy on Facebook who clutches his pearls at everyone else’s comments and starts debates about everyone else’s moral failings. Nor was I wild about posting something on the page of a woman who is little more than an acquaintance and then having some troll of a human being laying into me, questioning whether I’d just made the whole thing up.

So, I decided to spare myself all the fuss. At the same time, I did write up a nearly two-page answer, and since I have a blog, it’s a shame to let it to go waste. So, here it is.

It was prompted by this meme:

            Here’s what I know.

            I’m a parent, and I have a to-do list.

            My to-do list contains the entry “Pick headstone.”

            The headstone in question is for my son, Colin.  He died last year.  He was 5.

            Colin died of a brain tumor and we had what felt like a large funeral.  I think it was between 80-100 people attending.  So, we haven’t suffered from Covid-19, nor have we had to push through the nightmare of organizing a funeral during a pandemic.  I can’t speak to any of that.

            I don’t know how the quality of my son’s funeral would have changed if there had been significantly more or significantly fewer people in attendance.  I was numb through much of it.  I remember enjoying speaking to people afterwards.  That said, we didn’t get around to burying him until almost a month after he died.  And we’d known for months before his death that he was going to die, so we were fairly well-prepared for it.  The funeral felt like a form of closure, but it was really just another step on a process I’m still living through.  I simply don’t know what the number of people there meant to me.

            I do know that, because I am American, but live in Europe, most of my family couldn’t make it.  One German aunt came, as did one niece from America.  Everyone else was unable to travel or simply couldn’t break away.  I understood.

            I also know that I barely interacted with many people who came to the funeral, sometimes by choice, sometimes because you can only talk to so many people in one afternoon.

            I do know that in the months since his death, some of my greatest support has come from people who live nowhere near me.  It’s been from the people who take a moment to drop me an email or to respond to a post on my blog.  A friend flew out a month after the funeral and I practically counted the minutes until his arrival.  My therapist and I meet online now because of the virus and I get a lot of strength from those moments.  But I also enjoy meeting in person whenever I can with friends in the neighborhood.  I’ve been lucky in that: Germany never had a complete lockdown.

            But I still don’t know about the numbers at the funeral.  I know you can’t speak about a funeral being “good” or “better.”  You can only really think about it in terms of being “less bad” or “more manageable.”  Would it have been less awful if there had been 200 people?  I don’t know.  Would it have been more awful if there had been only about 10?  I don’t know.  How would I have reacted had I been told that most of the people who wanted to come – the people I wanted there – could not come?  I don’t know.

            I know I’ve been going through a phase ever since Colin died where I almost can’t stand to see other people happy.  Or, to be more clear, I would like to see some people as unhappy as myself.  There is a terrible part of me that wants another parent of a now-6-year-old to see their child die, just so I would have one other person who understands how I feel.  It is hard for me to hear from other parents about how their children are doing.

            Does that translate into how other people experienced their loved one’s funerals?  Does it make me feel worse that another kindergartener died somewhere and had hundreds more turn out?  Does it help me control my grief if I know someone else only had a few people turn out for their child’s death?  Does it hurt you that you had a small funeral for your loved one?  Would your pain be less if George Floyd’s family also had a small funeral? 

            I don’t know.

            I suspect people are annoyed by the media coverage of the Floyd funeral.  I work in the media and know what a circus it can become if you let journalists into your funeral, so I was also surprised that they made the choice they did.  Then again, had someone come up to me at Colin’s funeral and told me that a little media attention might in some way help prevent another child from dying the same way, how would I have reacted? I don’t know.

            I don’t know what to do with the debate that the Floyds are being treated better somehow by being allowed to have a large funeral.  The whole concept of one funeral being better than another is foreign to me, as the loved one is still dead at the end of the day.  I do know that a fairly quick Google search shows me that Texas law does not currently put any limits on the number of guests at a funeral, though it does recommend face masks and greater-than-normal distances between guests.  The only real requirement is that funeral facilities be cleaned thoroughly between uses.

            I do know that, when the funeral ends, you just need to keep going on with your life. Days turn to months and months to years and you’re expected to live your life as normally as you can, as ridiculous as the attempt feels.  I think different people deal with all of this quite differently.  For some people, it matters the world that a loved one’s funeral is well-attended, for others, it matters more that friends and family keep them lifted up for months after the fact.  For some, you wonder how you can survive watching the horror of a brain tumor only to be catapulted into a world facing a pandemic.  Some would do anything to stop the virus’ spread.  Some would do anything to draw attention to a cause.  I don’t know, but it feels like it doesn’t help to judge everyone so much and to, instead, find ways to help each other through this.

            But I don’t know.

If I were to make a list of all the things I worry about regarding my behavior since Colin’s death … well, it would be a very long list. But one thing I keep coming back to is this sense that my capacity for empathy has been radically diminished in the last year.

Which is not to say that I have none. Nor is it to say that I suffered at the least twinge of pain from anyone else in my presence. I simply think I was more capable of it 2-3 years ago.

All the news coming out of the States in the last few weeks has made me think about it all the more. I don’t want to get political at all here, but there are simple facts. If I see one person kneeling on another person’s neck, I think there was a time when I would have been able to muster outrage. Now … I can see that it’s a bad thing. I certainly wouldn’t want to happen to me. But, on many levels, the best I can muster is a “Well, that’s not good.” Similarly, with the protests against police brutality … I get the basics of the argument. I get why you would be mad if you were convinced that the police single you out unnecessarily. And yet, right now, it doesn’t rise much above an academic exercise for me.

This is not how I remember myself. I remember being enraged by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and horrified by the September 11 attacks. I remember being scared of Ebola and sad when Challenger blew up. I’m not convinced that I can work up the energy for things that aren’t directly happening to me any more.

Nor does it have to be abstract. We had dinner with some friends a few weeks ago when the host started talking about his job and how the coronavirus shutdown has affected him. He’s an airplane pilot. I knew this. I’ve known this for years. And yet, three months into this coronavirus quagmire, this was the first time it had even dawned on me that he might be affected by all this, forget walking over one day and just asking how things were going. I’d like to think the old me would have at least sent a “So, how’s it going text” amid all this.

And now. Everything I hear. You don’t like your job? Your children aren’t handling lockdown well? You’re the victim of systemic repression? So far, everything everyone has thrown at me only gets the following out of me: “Well, you haven’t watched your child die slowly, have you?”

I mean, to my credit, I use my inside-my-head voice for that. I make the right noises when confronted with and I look sad. I recognize that these things aren’t good. But there’s a large chunk of me that just doesn’t care about anyone else’s problems. I’m still so wrapped up with mine. Because even though I seem to be doing well – and I hear nothing but how well I’m handling this – all I can think of is how it’s been just more than a year since we found out his condition was terminal and just about a year since we moved into the hospice and almost nine months since he died. And that’s awful enough. But then come the thoughts and questions. Did I handle last year as well as I could have? Did I do everything possible for my son? I like to think yes, but then the doubt creeps in when I’m not ready for it and, I’m sorry, I’m wound up in my own psyche. Your problems? I just can’t.

And so the question becomes is this just the way it is for the first year or so after a loss like that of Colin? Will I work my way back up to caring about what’s going on outside my four walls? As ugly as it can look out there some times, I’d like to think I will. But, for now, all I can do is worry every now and then that I don’t worry. It’s going to have to do for now.

I have my weekly meeting with my therapist tomorrow and, as usual, I have homework. Unusually, I’m actually trying to do it. I’m supposed to ponder the following:
– What do I want out of therapy at this point?
– How often should I be going to therapy?

I’ve been thinking about it since our last meeting and it dawned on me that I really ought to write it down if I want it to be coherent, and then I figured, hell, if I’m writing things down, then I might as well just turn it into a blog entry.

I think the main problem is that everything I want out of therapy comes in pairs and all of those pairs directly contradict one another:

• I want to keep feeling, in general, as a functional human being, because I need to keep myself together to take care of myself and my family.
• I want to have a complete breakdown at some point because it doesn’t feel like I’m doing grieving right if I manage to go about my life.

• I want to be able to feel joy and happiness on a regular basis.
• I feel like a bad person because I can somehow put my memories of Colin aside for any length of time to enjoy any part of normal life.

• I want people to treat me normally. I don’t want to spend my life being pigeonholed as the guy who lost a kid.
• I want people to give me a break if I lose my temper or mess up at work because, God, it’s been less than a year since I held my five-year-old’s hand as he died.

• I don’t want to be one of those people who spends too much time talking about the misery of it all or posting Vaguebook references about how empty life is.
• I want to be able to get away with telling people I don’t like that I spent my weekend tending the gravesite or that I didn’t sleep well because Colin is on our mind, because I want to make someone feel as uncomfortable in his or her own skin as I do.

• I want to truly be able to believe that I did the best I could for him.
• I spend long stretches of time hating myself for wishing that last summer would just end because I was so sick to death of watching him die and kind of wish someone would call me out for being that way.

Which, I guess, makes the other question pretty easy to answer. Yeah, I probably need to keep up with some kind of therapy. I’m still not convinced that any amount of analysis is going to sort any of this out, but I’m also pretty convinced that talking this out with someone is better than the alternative, even if we’re limited to some kind of Zoom-like system for the time being. I’m not sure to this day what my therapist is actually doing with me – maybe he’d get somewhere if I did my homework halfway regularly – but I know it feels good talking to him. It’s almost like meeting an after-work drinking buddy, minus the beer. Maybe that’s what it all comes down to.