I’ve had a lot of unbidden memories lately. It’s weird, because every time I think that I’ve reached a point where “Oh yes, being the father of a dead child is just what I do,” something comes along and hits me hard. I suppose, right now, part of it is a side effect of living with Christina’s cancer. I suppose some of it is that we might have just had a wave of Covid wash through the house (or it might have exclusively gotten me, the signs are unclear). Or I suppose it might just have something to do with being the father of a dead child.
A week or so I was coming home with Murphy and I started thinking about Christmas. It was easy to think about Christmas for the first two weeks of December, since we had unseasonable cold and snowfall. Usually we don’t get snow – if we get any – until February or so. This year we had nearly two weeks of sub-zero, icy weather. It was kind of nice, except for the part where you risked your life every time you got on a bicycle. And I was getting home and thinking something about Christmas, and maybe my current attack of Covid had already begun, and I just wondered if this was going to land Christina in the hospital.
And then I remembered Colin in the hospital. Specifically, I remembered him in the hospital on Christmas Eve, 2018. He had gone in right at the start of the month – never really got to open his Advent calendar that year, never really got any of the pre-Christmas fun, except for seeing that one inflatable Santa on the way to day care, which was all the more of a pity because it turned out to be his last Christmas – and was still in the ICU for the holiday. We split it up, so I spent the bulk of Christmas Eve there with him and then we switched in the middle of the night so I could be home for Christmas Day. The German parent got to celebrate the German Christmas festival with the other two, the American parent got the American Christmas festival. It’s so depressing how you have to get so practical with these things.
He slept most of the time. Towards evening he woke up a little, and we had one of his gifts there in the room in case. It was a smallish Lego set which, in retrospect, is such a stupid thing to give to a kid in the ICU. How was he going to play with it? But he loved Ninjago and so we had a little set for him. And I think he was excited to see the gift, but he was so out of it, it was hard to tell. And he tried to open it but he could barely move his hands with all the tubes and wires, so I helped him. And we looked at it. I might have even built it for him. But God, that’s not the way Christmas is supposed to be.
I’ve barely thought about that in the five years since that night. And then, in front of my house, it came right back to me. I hate those memories. More to the point, I don’t understand why the good memories don’t come up unbidden like that. Facebook tries to help. A few days ago it delivered the picture of him from when he climbed in the clothes dryer. It’s a great picture, but I have zero memories of the event. If it wasn’t for the fact that I photographed it and Facebook throws it back out into the world from time to time, I would not remember it.
I didn’t expressly wonder what it would be like if Christina ends up in the hospital for Christmas. There’s no reason to think she will. The most recent ultrasound shows that the tumor is, functionally, gone. She still needs to go through all the chemo and radiation that was planned for her, but they seem to have gotten the tumor. And yet there’s this fear in my head that cancer = tragic Christmas.
And it’s not like the Facebook memories are all great. I took a screenshot of the one of those Then and Now memories Facebook likes to serve up from time to time (it’s actually the one at the top of this blog) and it was all I could do not to run to the cemetery and take a shot of the gravestone and send it back to Facebook with a “That’s how it’s going. You happy now!” Knowing full well this is just an algorithm doing its thing, not an actual ploy from Marc Zuckerberg to rub salt in my wounds.
But it keeps hurting so much. I keep thinking that it’s supposed to feel normal. That I’m not supposed to be in – I wouldn’t call it constant – but recurring pain. That other people have lost loved one and they learn to cope somehow. And I’ve learned to cope. I just don’t think it will ever feel normal. Because it keeps surprising me.
I was texting with Ricardo yesterday and it dawned on me that it would make sense if we set up a group with him, me and Christina, so I don’t have to keep running between the two of them to get things sorted out. I went to create it and found there was one there already. We just hadn’t used it since 2019. When Colin was in the hospice. The last exchanges are a long series of Ricardo trying to get back into the building with the children after closing hours. I can imagine why I didn’t want to look at that group any more. Then again, it would be helpful to have a chats with him and Christina simultaneously.
I want a restart. I want a mind wipe. Except I really don’t. I want to be able to control the memories. But I can’t.
The guy I mentioned last time at the dad’s group still haunts me. He’s putting so much effort into keeping his son alive. It keeps making me wonder if I could have done more. Maybe we should have popped him onto a plane and flown to Boston or Zurich or wherever the one doctor in the world is who could have sliced that damned tumor out of his neck. But I don’t think that doctor exists. So all I’ve got it a head of memories in the wrong order and various machines that serve them up to me when I’m not expecting them.
I think, once the Covid is gone and we get a two-week break from Christina’s chemo, I’ll feel better. I think once I’m off work for about two weeks, I’ll feel better. Once I can sit down in my living room without a mask and with the remains of my family and have a beer while watching “Scrooged” or “A Christmas Story,” I’ll feel better. I’ll never feel 100% right, I’m starting to realize, but I can keep hoping that every day will be a little better. I mean, if you look at it from the right Christian perspective – and it’s dark – every day gets me one day closer to seeing him again, which is what I believe. I don’t think it’s how you’re meant to move through life. But it’s what I’ve got to work with.
As Christmas letters go, this has been pretty terrible, I do apologize. I do get into the Christmas spirit when I’m away from the blog. And proper cards will go in the mail soon. But if I don’t blog again this year, I thank all of you for reading and caring. On into 2024.
❤️