Lossiness

A dear friend from grade school got in touch with me recently while passing through the area. We went out for coffee, then walked around town on a beautiful spring day. We had a very nice conversation, free and easy, even as I related some of my feelings of grief since the last time I got to speak with her, which was very soon after we lost Aidan. At one point we chatted about college. I had dropped out, and I suppose she wondered how things would have turned out for me if I had stayed. She asked: “If you knew then what you know now, what would you have changed?” I kind of whiffed. I told her I didn’t really have much of a choice, which was true enough. My family and its finances were simply too unstable at the time, and I couldn’t manage the chaos. There was grief and trauma to deal with back then, too, unfortunately. So chalk it up to fate. But her question unnerved me, surprisingly so. I felt myself starting to come a bit unglued. It later made me flinch t...

Around ten months after we lost Aidan, I was continuing to have trouble controlling my flinching from the trauma. I would see something or think of something, then flinch. A quick shake of the head, like a sudden shiver. Not very often at work, but mostly during idle moments during meetings when I wasn’t engaged in some other immediate task. It was not recounting the traumatic events of losing him that triggered me. It was little memories, the accumulation of tiny details. Simple things, like the color orange, his favorite, and how he said it was his favorite even though it was also my favorite, and I reminded him he could have whatever favorite color he wants. I thought about how my brain was reacting to these memories. Why did they make me flinch? I actually talked with Aidan about it. What do you think is going on? (These conversations happen a lot when you grieve.) I realized it was as if the feelings they stirred up had no place to go. They felt all bottled up, and my fl...