It can start with a word game on my phone, a combination of crossword and Boggle. I’m given a collection of letters and I have to make words that fit the spaces. One of the last words I figure out is “fatal.”
Fatal.
And with that one word, I’m opening my door to two strangers with badges—a coroner and a lieutenant. I didn’t know who they were at first, although I remember noticing the embroidered coroner’s emblem on a shirt, a badge on a belt.
Fatal.
With that one word in a pointless word game, my heart runs away with my mind.
“This is about your son, Cooper.”
“I’m afraid it’s not good.”
“He didn’t make it.”
Fatal.
Tomorrow will be 46 weeks and I’m dancing around anxiety because of one word in a silly game. At times like this, I think I’m being ridiculous. Dramatic. After all, I plod through my days and weeks and months. I survived the school year. I’m generally functional. I bluff daily, but I get by. So can’t I get it together and keep it together?
Nope. Apparently not. Not if one word in a game can have me wailing and screaming, if only in my mind. Not if one word can have my heart hammering. But then I remember the words spoken at my back door, the hand on my shoulder and suggestion that maybe I should sit down, the refusal to leave to notify my husband until someone was with me. Then I remember that yes, this really is as bad as it seems. The space behind my breastbone aches with good reason.
It’s hard to find the balance between living life and accepting grief. Some days tip the scale one way or the other. Today, grief was already winning. Today, I didn’t need a mirror to tell me my eyes were flat and my sorrow showed. Today, my genuine happiness for a friend was tinged with sadness, with wondering if I will ever feel the joy she so clearly felt this morning.
Tonight, it started with a silly word game. In Sunday School, it was our pastor’s comment that, as an EMT, sometimes the most important thing he does is comfort and reassure the patient or family members, a truth I learned firsthand.
Maybe on another day, “fatal” would be just one more word in that level’s puzzle, but I don’t think so. Not yet. For now, that word has too many connections, too many connotations.
My feeling and knowing, my mind and heart, are not in sync. So, I’m writing it out. I know if I asked another Mom Who Knows, she’d nod, reassure me, and make me feel less crazy. I guess I want to help someone else feel less crazy, too, if I can. After all, I know “fatal” is just a word, but here I am, feeling crazy.
I’ll probably stick to cards and backgammon for the rest of the night, just to play it safe.
Woods Writes 