You don’t say

We were having dinner with Ricardo over as a guest, about a week ago, and the topic of his nursing exams came up. The specifics are unimportant, but there was a mention of the performance he would have to give in an intensive care unit, which prompted the question from the kids: “What’s an intensive care unit?”

I’ll admit, my first thought was “How can you not know what an intensive care unit is?,” a similar experience to when Noah biffs and doesn’t know the English word “hospital” while doing his vocabulary words with me. They’re such integral words to me after the years we had with Colin in and out of hospitals. But, in their defense, we did insulate the kids a lot from the hospital experience, so why would they know that intensive care is a unique space in a hospital? Anyways, the question led to some explanations about what an ICU is and why it matters during this pandemic, but it doesn’t matter, because I was remembering Christmas 2019 in the intensive care ward and working very hard not to answer the question as “It’s a place you take your child and hope he won’t die.”

There is so much NOT talking that goes with this grief we bear. Christina called me distraught a few weeks ago because she met a new colleague and the question of families came up and, when asked how many children she had, she answered “three.” Except this person was more interested in her family life than the average person, so instead of moving on to ordering a coffee, the questions came fast and furious. How are we coping with such a young child during the pandemic? How are we managing his education? What does our 7-year-old understand about the pandemic? And all through this, Christina is wondering how she can extricate herself from this situation. Say “Actually, I meant two children,” and you disown Colin. Say “What I meant to say was that the third child is dead,” and it feels like you’re dropping a brick on your conversational partner. It feels easier sometimes to gloss it all over.

I mean, a few weeks ago I was out walking the dog with a buddy when we ran into a third guy also out with his dog. We exchanged greetings and he joined us on the walk and soon we were discussing politics and, somehow, we moved to talk about the British royal family and Prince Andrew’s current problems. It was important to me to explain that a lot of the details of the case were new to me, because I had not been one little bit interested in watching Andrew’s infamous interview back in 2019, so I’ve only just learned about some of the worst bits by reading in recent weeks. But I didn’t say why I was uninformed on the issue. Not to this stranger. I just said “I was very busy in 2019 and didn’t follow this case as closely as I could have.” It’s not a lie, but it’s far from the truth.

Truth be told, the dog walking thing isn’t necessarily working for me, on this level. I mean, dog ownership is great, but I thought I would be meeting a ton more of the neighbors by being out with Murphy all the time. Instead, I head out with Murphy because I’m in an anti-social mood, so I don’t stop to chat, or, if I’m really unlucky, I run into someone who wants to chat about Murphy’s breed and training just as I’ve discovered that, for reasons that elude me, that listening to “Comfortably Numb” on my headphones is a bad idea because it’s just triggered some memory I wasn’t expecting and I’d rather be crying my eyes out than talking about whether Murphy is more likely to be a herding or a hunting breed.

I suppose there are always some things you hold back. Today we discussed Ukraine with the kids and I was as honest as I could be, but I didn’t lay on the line that there’s a part of my mind wondering about what happens if we have to flee to the States. I don’t tell Murphy that I’m worried he’s going to end up as a street dog after all if we end up fleeing Berlin in the middle of the night. Then again, I have moments of blinding honesty. Discussing with a friend about whether I’d fight or run if Berlin was threatened, I joined the run team. The question of cowardice was brought – not accusingly, just wondering if that was the cowardly path. And maybe it is, but I answered that I’ve already watched one child die and I couldn’t do a thing about it. If there’s an option to save the other two and I can help it, I’m taking the chance.

It’s a harsh truth. And that’s probably why you’re not going to see it as a T-shirt slogan any time soon. But it felt good to get out. Perhaps it will be that easy to talk about Colin one day.