Remember that movie? With Robin Williams. Man, that movie kicked my emotional ass. It came out within a year or so of my Jerry’s passing. My Soulmale; my husband. Well, anyway. Last night and early this morning was a time like that.
I couldn’t sleep, but I was emotionally fine. Bloghopping and playing computer games while watching Gorilla’s in the Mist (another great movie!). Before I knew it, it was 3 AM and I knew if I didn’t get a lil sleep I’d be fucked today. So, wide awake, I whined a lil as I shut down my Mac, turned the light off and tried to get comfy for sleep.
Bam!
It was like a light switch turned on in my head! All of a sudden it was as if every one of the recent horrible moments of my life began playing like a video loop in my head. I saw myself at the Integratron the moment my daughter called and told me our Lil Pharoah had stopped breathing… felt myself driving 120 miles an hour over a winding desert highway, with my mouth so dry I felt like I was choking on dust and a knot in my stomach that felt like ten tons of radioactive waste.
Flash forward to my baby… my precious daughter on her knees retching and dry heaving and crying and screaming “Noooo…. I want my son back. Give him back to me”, while we knelt beside her, her husband and I stroking her hair and sobbing.
To his tiny cremains…
To my daughter’s beautiful face that now wears the shadow of this loss.
Fuck! I was like, what the fuck is going on? Where did this come from? I struggled with my mind and heart, tried to divert myself with meditation, with to-do lists for today, with what I would make for dinner, the next blog post I would write…
It was no good. My head just kept playing those awful tapes, along with a couple more that are too awful to even write. Playing them over and over and over.
This used to happen to me after Jerry died, too. But somehow last night, and my daughter’s pain, made it so much worse.
The last time I looked at the clock it was about 4:30, so I finally went to sleep. I awakened this morning around 9AM, with echoes of the nights visions, but they were distant and foggy; much more like the memories of those awful days that I have been accustomed to living with.
At 10AM my daughter called me on her break. “Mom, me n A. had a hella night!” she said. “We went to bed early but we tossed and turned, both of us, all night. When we woke up this morning we both felt like we hadn’t slept at all- like we’d had bad dreams all night but couldn’t remember them”.
I’m so fucking grateful that they couldn’t remember them.
