The hospice pulled together a weekend music program for siblings of deceased children this weekend. Emma bailed after Saturday, but Noah is there as I type this. From what I’ve gathered, amid the post-session bickering, is that they’re creating a dramatic story with sound effects revolving around a squirrel – or maybe a unicorn – that emits rainbows. And, when I saw “emits,” I actually mean a much grosser verb, because this is being stylized by children with hyperactive imaginations.
It felt almost normal to go there. We rented a car to get them there and back and, heaven knows, just being able to drive through Berlin for the first time in six months felt shockingly normal (our old car died in December and we have not made getting a new one much of a priority). The simple act of driving to the hospice feels excessively normal. I’ve known my in-laws for nearly 20 years, but I still have to think hard every time we go to their town to make sure I’m on the right street and taking the right exit, etc. etc. I feel I could find the hospice in the dark and after being spun around a few times, much like I could find my parents house. No one I know has lived at 12 Kensington Drive for more than 15 years, but I could home in on that without a problem. Getting to the hospice is almost the same.
While there, I ran into Eva, who runs the program. She thinks that, starting in two weeks, the kids will be able to meet for a normal rock climbing session, ie indoor with he whole group. They did meet this week, but only half the group and at an outdoor site. But the case count in Berlin and Germany has collapsed in the last few weeks. It’s been just a month since I was obsessing about going to Noah’s first communion and getting the news that – SURPRISE – the priest had coronavirus the whole time, like we were busy playing the worst whodunnit of all time. It felt so normal to think that we were going to be locked away for months more.
Now, Germany has suddenly discovered how to get vaccinations distributed and, if you read the Washington Post rankings, is actually doing a lot better than most of Europe. Christina and I got tests yesterday, which authorized us for a day of activities. We even took the kids to a restaurant (we sat on the terrace). If you squint, you can start seeing the outlines of normal. As I’m typing this, a friend is texting me about his progress through his vaccination. I mean, it feels like we might survive this.
Of course, this being us, that presents a whole new set of problems for me. I took a moment to go the memorial pond at the hospice while I was there. It felt like there were so many more stones than there had been the last time I was there, but I imagine that’s my memory playing tricks on me. Then again, I did run into the chief custodian while I was there. She is about the most grandmotherly lady I’ve ever met in my life, and she remained super friendly. But she looked so tired. Maybe it was because she was working on a Saturday, but I imagine that her job isn’t easy on the best of days. She doesn’t provide any direct medical care, but she still has to be upbeat while she’s delivering new linens and making food for people who are watching their kids die. I never saw that in 2019. This weekend, she looked tired and she said it’s been a bear, keeping everyone as safe as possible in the house. It scares me a little to ask if any of the families we knew in 2019 – the ones who were there with long-term patients – are still there.
But that was a diversion. Because I so rarely go to Colin’s grave, I spoke to his stone and told him what he’d missed and how we were going to have to try to get back to normal now. Which then brought up the question – what is normal any more? I guess everyone else pops back to life, but now with restaurants and time actually spent in the office. But, even for me, it’s easy to forget that we went from Colin’s death in September 2019 to this lockdown world in March 2020. In there we had a small side trip to Leipzig and Dresden, a few awkward months of getting the kids back into school and me back into work. Christina returned to the office less than two weeks before everyone got sent home. We’ve all found ways to work and go to school since then, but this isn’t normal. But the six months we had before lockdown weren’t normal and the 10 months we had before that were near utter hell. And we can’t go back to further before that, because we’re missing a person. So, I don’t know which normal we’re going to pick.
I suppose we’ll just get on with it. I mean, at the hospice, I could see into the dining area and saw that they had broken up the community table in favor of a series of smaller nooks. You adapt. You learn. We have and we will. But there’s such a sense of trial and error. How many arrangements do you think they’ve tried in their dining room since March 2020 until they have what they’re doing now? How long did Eva and her team have to work on plans for this weekend until they came up with the program going on right now? How on Earth do you run a climbing center amid all this? You figure it out, I suppose. I know we do, but things do go a little off. A few weeks ago I had a buddy over for beers, and I wanted to have a good time. A few beers in, something clicked and I went into full-on depression mode, talking about my dead son and trying to survive it. It’s not who I want to be, yet it’s who I am now. I suppose, given what we have to deal with, it’s normal.
I think I’m going to still need a little time to adjust to it. I’m not entirely sure I know what normal is any more.
In the weeks before we moved into the hospice, Christina hatched a never-realized plan that we would pack the kids, a nurse and all of Colin’s gear into the car and go to Legoland. The plan terrified me. Was it normal that I wasn’t up to one big last outing as a family of five? Was it normal that Christina wanted to try it, despite all the hurdles we’d have to jump?
The first night in the hospice, the kid next door had 80s music on the radio. I texted a friend in a frenzy. “We’ll do good here,” I seemed to say “They have Culture Club.” Was it normal to think that this could possibly be a good sign? Was it normal to try to turn a miserable situation into something a little bit better, me in a room with my dying son, listening to music played for a boy who, as near as I could tell, was non-responsive?
We got to the hospice with days to go until Noah’s 9th birthday. He handled that relatively well, with the promise that we’d make the next birthday better. Then, along came the lockdown. Is it normal that we’re now going to try to have a birthday for him at some point? Do we have one party for him? Three? Is it normal to worry about that detail when a couple of million people are dead because of a virus?
I see normal coming down on us and, as much as I want to get excited about haircuts and going back to the gym, I see a minefield ahead of me of not wanting to bring the room down by talking about my dead son at the wrong time or heading on our next vacation and having that brief moment where I catch myself and say we’ll be a party of four, not five. I think I’m only just realizing that we kind of got to segue from our nightmare into a protected bubble – and you can argue whether that bubble was good or bad for us – and only now, if things go well, do we really and truly have to think about being normal again. Except we’re not and I don’t think we’ll ever quite be. We can pretend at it very well, but a few of the basics are missing and it’s not hard to notice if you know what you’re looking for.
So, bring on normal. Just understand that we’re going to need a lot of practice at it, I think.
❤️