Monday, September 27, 2010

Coping

I'm not. Coping, that is. When Finley was still in the NICU, a nurse asked Tim how he keeps going every day, but everyone knows the answer to that question. You just do. You get up in the morning, breathe in and out, etc. It doesn't matter how little you want to or how much it hurts. You do it. There isn't a choice.

A woman in the ward I grew up in lost her son, who wasn't much older than my brother. A few weeks later, she died too. The obituary said it was from a broken heart, and I keep wondering if that's a real thing, or if it's a euphemism. I think it's a real thing. Her surviving son and husband somehow still live, though. No matter how much or how little they want to, here they are, on Earth, breathing in and out.

Life and death just don't belong to us mortals.

How do we live with that? How can I find hope among the mourning and fear? How do I know the world won't collapse around me tomorrow when one day, not so very long ago, it did just that? How do I hang on for the future I believe in when I don't believe I'm good enough to get there?

And how do I hang on today when I am literally falling apart? I've had more than seven infections in the past eight months, and my doc says my immune system may not be working properly. My sensitive-lunged baby and I got a cold around the same time, and while he's doing just fine now, I'm still a mess of snot and tissues and aching.

So I find myself here, with the best of all reasons to live and the one thing that makes living so miserable I am sometimes ready to crumble beneath all of the breathing in and out.

And though there are many days where I can inhale without tasting hell on my lips in the air here on Earth, today, past the time anyone would ask how I am coping, I would answer, "Not well. Not well at all."

3 comments:

Lisa said...

I'm so sorry. :( I can't pretend that I understand, but I'm so sorry.

Shar said...

i've felt this way the past few months with all the changes we've been going through - and i haven't lost a child. you have gone through several of the hardest trials EVER all at the same time. it sucks. but you ARE surviving. and i had to write something just to say that i am crying with you and praying for you.
so i was recently talking to a friend about counseling. she has gone to a counselor not for anything major, just that she felt like she could be doing better, and she suggested that maybe it's something i should look into. she said, "there's no other time when you can talk about yourself so much. you really start to learn about yourself and how you cope."

there's that cope word. if my insurance were't expiring in 3 days (yay for staying home with the girls, boo for not getting insurance when you work part time), i think i would go. maybe counseling could help us both? (and maybe medi-cal will pay for mine?)
here's to a better day tomorrow!

Shar said...

ps. will you email me your address? i'm trying to get my address book all up-to-date. asap. and how's that cute baby?

ps2. i will tell you that i cried every day for MONTHS after each of my kids was born. MONTHS.