Cut it out

My neighbor walked up to me and told me it looked like it was time for me to get a haircut.

It’s true. I last got to a barber at the end of February and I’m going full-on 80s hair at the moment. To add to the effect, I asked “What happens if I stop trimming my beard for the duration of the lockdown?” The answer is that I look like a vagrant, just one with a penchant for superhero T-shirts.

However, since I’m polite, I just nodded my head and agreed with the neighbor. But, inside, I was wondering how this woman who had kind-of-sort-of avoided us for most of the time Colin was dying suddenly decided we were pals enough to point out hair issues. I mean, yes, everyone is in the same boat as I am, hairstyle-wise (well, maybe with less 80s flair) and it’s not like it’s a touchy subject, but I remain confused on the “I won’t talk to you when you’re falling apart, but now that things are OK again, let’s be funny with one another” rules.

Or maybe everyone else is. It’s hard to tell.

After Colin died, one of the other guys at the bereaved Dad’s group told me that he bears the most ill will towards those who went silent around him and acted like he was no longer there. He acknowledged that some of the people who spoke to him said some pretty dumb things, but they were at least trying. I’m going to throw out there that there’s a third category: The people who keep speaking to you, but in such a way that makes clear that they never, ever want to talk about how your soul has been ripped in two because you spent the better part of 2019 watching your child die.

Case in point: Another acquaintance has this need to bring up topics where we disagree, seemingly every time we communicate. I’ve asked nicely, I’ve asked firmly, I’ve asked rudely, I’ve asked pointedly … just give it a break. There are so many topics we can talk about, we can easily let pass these ones that set me off.

And yet, each piece of correspondence comes back with those topics buried in an aside somewhere. And I no longer really have a feel for the situation. Is it cool for this person to keep bringing these up? Is it cool of me to ask this person to step outside of a clearly established comfort zone? Do the rules say my interests outweigh those of the others simply because I lost a son? On the one hand, I don’t want people to treat me special. Then again, I’d prefer people not go out of their way to annoy me. Or at least to realize that, even though it’s been seven months since my kid died, it still feels like yesterday in some ways, especially on those days where I have to pull together the energy to pay some bill for his health care or to put away yet another box of his toys. Things are far from normal for me at this moment.

Other people do grief. Maybe it would be more obvious to others if I was sobbing my eyes out most of the time. I do anger. I get mad at God. I get mad at him for being gone. I get mad at myself for not having handled it any better. I get mad at our 6-year-old neighbors for being alive and I get mad at all the parents I see out there because none of them have any idea what it’s like to lose a child. I get mad at the people complaining about being forced to stay inside their homes for the last four weeks because, honestly buddy, you don’t know what pain is.

So, I’m angry. Pretty much all the time. And it’s taken me until now to realize that other people aren’t going to change. And it probably isn’t good for my mental health to go on Facebook and try to knock heads with people who disagree with me. And if I’m going to stop being angry all the time, maybe I need to minimize how much time I spend around the people who make me angry. And I think that means that I’m going to just stop talking and dealing with some people. No big speeches about how I just need to cut this person or that person out of my life. I’m just going to stop. Because I need to stop feeling angry all the time, and if I’m going to do that, I need to start somewhere.

(Fear not, if you’re reading this blog, you’re most likely not one of the people I’m going to cut out of my life)