Twenty-eight has been rough. The roughest. Beckett came in to this year of my life swinging, and has changed each and every corner of me. My mother told me shortly after his death that she was not only mourning him, but also me. I did not disagree with her. I died the day that Beckett did and someone else was born. I am still getting to know her and I find I too am occasionally shocked by her thoughts and actions. Today on my birthday, it is my first as her.
So in the face of a new year, of twenty-nine, I find myself holding my breath. Ready for what has happened to end and for new things to begin. But a quick punch in my gut reminds me of what I know to be true: this will never end. Grief is a mountain range, surrounded by wide valleys and stretching pools. I find myself trekking it’s vast expanses, devoted to besting it. And while sometimes I reach a new peak, or an unexplored clearing, the longer I spend exploring it, the deeper my understanding of my life here becomes. While I may move throughout this landscape, I will never scale the entire mountain. It’s summit lays beyond a thick grey cloudy skyline. Beckett’s death; it will hold me here until I too close my eyes and find eternal rest.
I knew coming in to it that twenty-eight was going to be a mess. Still, I have cried this July nearly as much as the previous one. My birthday is not the only one coming to pass this month, but instead is shared with Beckett’s. Before his terrible diagnosis, I was ecstatic to think we would share summer birthdays together. Tyler and Moira have birthdays only two weeks apart, and I thought now he and I would share the same bond. What I am left with was never what I imagined. There is irony at every turn of this journey, and this is one subject of it I find myself often reflecting on. July has always been my favorite month of the year. The heat, the fun, the long summer days. My birthday midway though. Now, my stomach turns when I think about it. When people have mentioned that my birthday is nearly here, I brush it aside. Because to think of my birthday is to think of Beckett’s. To think of everything he will never have. No candles, no gifts. No guests scooping him up for kisses, no party. No birthday cake. I can’t even find myself wanting to celebrate Beckett’s birth. Not because I wasn’t overjoyed to see him with my own eyes and hold him in my arms, but because I know that before either of those things happened, he endured absolutely horrifying trials. Needles and tubes and numerous surgeries. Interventions at every turn, and no way to make sense of it as a raw new being. It seemed unfair and cruel. One of the darkest truths I have learned from all of this is that life is often exactly that. It was, and it continues to be.
July being here is making me tread water. I usually expect incoming phases to feel different, and generally I assume they will be better. But sometimes, they are worse, and I told myself July would be. It will never be a best-loved time of year again. I knew before it arrived that it would deconstruct carefully crafted fortresses and delicate sanctuaries of peace I have left along the terrain. I can’t focus and I can’t sit straight. Beckett is going to explode all month long, alongside with my heart. He deserves it. He deserved everything, and that’s what July is always going to remind me of. He should have been here. He should be my summer pair. Instead, my birthday feels as though it lays in the shadow of his. One of our many bonds, something I can’t differentiate from him. The heat, the fun…My son, his short life…A melting pot of emotion, oozing over.
I spent twenty-eight years as the person I was last July 14th. I love her, and she was a good person. So is this new one. Better in so many ways, and also, so much worse. I am trying to celebrate this recent character as my first year living life as her begins. While before I knew most of my own shades, unfamiliar ones fan out my personality now, and they are still unpredictable even to me. The many elements of my grief, and what it has turned me in to. I have many mountains to climb and many places to see. But I won’t break the skyline. I will never conquer the range. Instead I will have to live upon it.
The clouds leave me feeling dreary and soaked. When I first arrived, the storm was raging, and I was cast to the bottom of this difficult world. But now I am sat upon the rocks, staring out in to the mist. It’s hard to see much. It’s desperately cold, and sometimes I think I might shatter from the shivering. It aches. But I know the weather isn’t going to break, so I can’t either. I have to breath in deeply, and count each inhalation. Pace myself if this is to be endured, reminding myself that I don’t want to freeze to death. But sometimes, I wonder if maybe I do.
Then, on the rarest occasions, a ray of light bounces in through the heaviness and for a moment, I feel warmer. The sunshine is the passing factor, the storm is the permanent surrounding. But that’s okay. The storm is beautiful too. And while I do not set my sights on reaching the peak of what I realize now will be insurmountable, I do sometimes catch a glimpse of something breaking through. A movement in the distance. Figments of imagination. Stirrings of the beyond. I can’t be sure. Maybe the stars.
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