On triggers and grief

Mama, come!

His words sound urgent, but they always do. His mind is in constant motion, so I have no idea what he wants to show me today.

All I know is that we are awake before the sun.

Lights flash outside the window of his newly painted room. An ambulance.

Mama, it’s Ms. Emma!*

My boy has just watched our neighbor be wheeled out of her house on a stretcher.

We’ve been worried about her for a while… trying not to be nosy as we watched her go from feisty independence to the whatever comes next that comes along with hanging around on earth for a long time.

And, for a moment, I cannot anymore. I have to hide under my heaviest blanket for a few minutes. To catch my breath and slow my pulse before I can do anything else.

It’s not the flashing lights that trigger me. He spent his last days at home.

It must be the urgency. The helplessness. The panic of oh, Jesus, no. 

Don’t make my kids see this, feel this.

Don’t make me! No!

It’s been five months since my dad died.

My mom, sister, aunt, uncle and I circled the wagons those last weeks.

Looking back, I am certain that what we did was right.

Watching it, living it through sleepless nights was also traumatic.

At first I shrunk from this word. But it is the right one. The precise one.

Another day I will write about the village that rose to support our family during those horrific weeks. But today, I want to speak how I feel.

Friends, I feel like all of my insides have been scooped out and the exposed skin has been left raw.

I can dissociate, of course. My delightful foray into trauma informed parenting has taught me all about this one. And some days, some moments, it is the best I can do. I curl into denial. Or flash hot into anger.

But in my quest to let myself feel my feelings, most often I hobble around, favoring my raw insides like I would a bum leg. Looking mostly ok. Trying not to complain. Walking tentatively, gingerly. The pain is tolerable until it bumps up against something too familiar. A word. A song. A picture. A memory. An idea. And then I am undone. My raw insides have been pricked and I am not ok.

I hate this for all of us.

For my mom– who lost her true love and safe place of 43 years.

For my big girl– who had to think about wedding dances at 14, whose heart had to process another loss, another leaving too soon.

For my little one– who will never get to show his Papa the fullness of who he is becoming. Who hopes, still, to make him proud.

And for me.

I hate this for me too.

And so.

I lean hard into the God who is near to the broken-hearted.

I say yes to your offers of help even when they make me feel like a charity case.

I crawl out from under my heaviest blanket and will the sun to rise after a night of soaking rain.

And I drag my grumpy little family to church and breathe deep for a minute or two, filling my lungs with the air of just being.

I still my mind for a second and let it all be true.

That my insides have been scraped raw.

That none of us are really ok.

And that is good enough.

*not her real name