The jugular

            I’m realizing there are some things I can’t keep doing if I want to stay sane.  Case in point, the background anger I’ve had with the world ever since Colin died needs to go away, or at least die down.

            It’s gotten better, it’s true.  I no longer find myself welling up with rage and ready to tell off random rude acquaintances and people in the street (though, that said, I kind of wish I had been able to turn it on with a particularly rude cashier on Saturday, but that’s another story).  No, with me, it’s become more subtle.

            Like, a few nights ago, I was having drinks with friends and the topic of this infamous picture from 2015, of a boy who had drowned while his family was trying to cross the Mediterranean and reach the EU, showed up.  Now, full disclosure, I’ve learned since Colin’s death that alcohol and media criticism are a bad, bad combination.  So, I should have walked away.  But I didn’t, and the debate turned unpleasant.  And we kept coming down to whether there had been a need to show this particular image.  Part of the argument was: Did the world really need to be forced to look at a dead kindergartener?

            So, that might have been a second red flag for me.  And I responded by pointing out that several people in the room had already seen a dead kindergartener. 

            I’ll admit, logically, I don’t know what point I was trying to make.  Other than: They should know how it feels.  What worries me more is that I wasn’t really trying to make a point.  I was mad and I felt that gave me the right to share my pain.  Like, “Dead 5-year-olds?  I know all about that.  Come along for the ride.”

            I don’t think anything gives me the right to do that, yet I keep doing it.  I find myself bringing him up, not entirely inappropriately, but it’s definitely sometimes forced.  Just because I want people to remember him.  Sometimes because I want them to realize how lucky they are.  Sometimes, I worry, that I just want to bring people down.

            It’s not every time.  A few months ago, I was sitting outside with people complaining about the lockdowns and how they hoped those never come back, because it was awful being home all the time.  “I’m not doing it if they tell us to,” one person said.

            I sat quietly.  What I wanted to say was “Being trapped in your home feels practically liberating after being stuck in a hospice for a summer.”  Being able to sit down with my family and have a meal – instead of hiding the fact that we’re eating from Colin because we don’t want him to think about the fact that he’s got a trach and can no longer take normal food – feels like such a weight off of our shoulders.  Not having to tiptoe around the home health care worker – assuming he showed up – is great.  Being stuck in my own walls was great, because it meant we were keeping death outside, instead of watching it take Colin inch by inch.

            You see how easy that came to me?  You see how quickly I can ruin a group kvetch session about lockdowns?  You see how I just throw Colin’s death out there because I want to pass along some of the pain I still feel, because it’s too much for me?

            It’s been three years since his death and I feel it keeps on making me a worse person.  I feel people are throwing me metaphorical life preservers.  Like, here, join this conversation and be normal with us again.  And my first instinct is almost always to see if I can drag them down with me.

            Christina took me to a concert last week, a birthday gift.  The plan was that we would leave around 7, grab dinner and then head to the show.  Of course, we got started a lot later than we’d planned, so we opted for a taxi.  And then the taxi got held up in traffic on its way to us, so we were even later.

            While we waited for the taxi that never came, Christina had me look up online to see if there was an opening act.  Because, if there was one, then we’d know that we had a little extra time before we had to be at the hall.

            Turns out there was no opening act.  There had been one planned, but the lead singer of the main act has gotten embroiled in a scandal about cheating on his wife and sexual assault on others.  Lord knows if any of it’s true and it’s not my place to judge.  All I know that, in the process of learning that there would be no opening act – it pulled out in protest at the allegations against the main act – I learned a whole lot more about the main band than I ever really cared to know.

            It changed the show, I must say.  I mean, most acts will have a song or two about relationships ending or dying or what-not.  And now, watching this show (they had a DJ play music for an hour for lack of an opening act), it all got really weird.  The singer was up there with his allegations.  His wife was up there too.  And there are random lyrics about things being a big deal and where did the love go and so on and so on.  It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to watching a divorce play out in real time.

            I’m not saying I loved it.  I have to admit, for the first hour or so, there was a strong urge to just leave because it was so awkward to watch the show, knowing what I had just learned.

            But there was also a part of me that liked it.  Like, “Ha.  Let someone else have the problems for a change.”

            And that’s the part of me I’m having a hard time liking.  I notice it becoming a more and more pronounced part of me, and I really want to keep it at bay.  This need to bring others down.  This need to make sure everyone feels just a little bit awkward around me.  This tic I’ve developed where I’ll make sure to bring Colin into conversations here and there, just because I want to make sure that no one forgets him, but also because I want to make everyone a little bit uncomfortable.  After all, if I can’t be happy, why should anyone else get to enjoy their home and their children and their life.  Mine’s not a mess, but it’s not the way I envisioned it.  Why not let everyone else have a taste of that from time to time.

            I know most of my friends get it.  I know most of my friends know that I’m carrying a world of hurt and that, even when I’m enjoying something, there’s a maudlin aftertaste right behind the fun.  I suspect several people would take away the pain if they could.  But the only way to take away the pain would be to take away the memories, and I won’t let those go.  So, I need to find ways to share the pain.  To exorcise it.  But I have to make sure I don’t use it as a weapon.  As a downer.  As a buzzkill.

            The concert got better in the second hour and I stopped worrying about who was divorcing whom and who slept with whom.  Maybe he is a bad person.  Maybe he’s falsely accused.  I came for the music and, whatever I think of what he might have done, the tickets had already been paid for, so he had my money no matter what I did.  I might as well get a good show out of it.

            Likewise, my son is gone.  It’s made me realize a lot of things about myself.  But nothing I’m going to do is going to bring him back.  So I have to remember him in ways like this, by writing about him.  But I can’t use him as a weapon.  He deserves better than that.