No Cheese Please

We painted the walls in our living room in January. Dalton and I did. It's only June.

I keep thinking about healthy Dalton. I think about him loading Iain into the carseat last April on the way home from the hospital. I think about our trip to San Francisco when I was 6 months pregnant and we walked from the theatre district to Cannery Row. I think about taking the convertible out last August to the Del Rae on our monthly date night. I think about Dalton packing his gym bag every morning with his running shoes.

These were just last year.

He can't be gone.

For today (and yesterday) numbness has given way to denial. I simply expect that Dalton is going to walk in the door any second and our life will be as it was. I want to hold his hand on the way home from church. I want him to swing Iain over his shoulders and give him a piggy back ride. I imagine him doing these things and it feels so natural. So much more nautral than him being dead. There is nothing natural about that.

We did nothing specific for father's day. I couldn't. Actually, we spent the afternoon with some friends, eating Thai and watching music videos. It was good, but hard. Our friends are happy. They should be happy. If they are reading this now, they need to know that they are doing everything right and shouldn't change any of their behavior. I am the one who has to realize that I am alone. That Dalton cannot put his arm around me or kiss me on the neck or do any of theose things that people do when they are in love. And every time I leave a social occasion, I feel like I want to run. Maybe if I don't have to be around anybody, it won't hurt so much. Maybe there is some way to escape it all.

Then I remember something else CS Lewis said about grief. After his wife died, he thought it was going to be especially difficult to go back to certain places he had previously been with his wife - the pub at which they regualrly ate, the hotel at which they often vacationed, etc. He resolved that rather than hide from these places, he would face them immediately and get it over with. What he discovered was profound.

There really was no difference in his pain. Her absence was no more noticeable in those places than it was anywhere else. It hurt because she was gone and it didn't matter if she was absent from his side at the pub or in their kitchen at home. It ws pervasive and inescapable.

So, what difference would it make if I ran? Dalton would be as absent in Montana as he is at our friends house in Los Angeles. And Iain and I would miss out on the love and friendship that we are being offered. So I'll stay for now even though it hurts. Maybe, eventually, this very long and awfully real nightmare will eventually come to an end and I can again hold his hand on the way home from church.

PS...Nobody better post the contrived cheesy comment that I will hold his hand someday in heaven, because right now that's not good enough.