Grief and social events

Looking for you in nature

All of the voices inside my head were arguing. They were shouting over each other, angry at all of the merriment around me. Much of it was about who is safe and who isn’t safe and what is allowed and what isn’t allowed now that you’re dead. There are so many rules and it’s so confusing that it's hard to keep track. And sometimes I forget the rules, which prompts the angry voices to shout and finger point and wear steel-toed boots just in case they need to kick someone. In all their rage, venom drips from the tongues, words too vile to include here. That anger was directed at everyone -- the people I live with, the acquaintances I saw at the park on Friday night. When the voices are shouting like that, I need to close my eyes, hoping to see your face, or stare into the distance towards nature.

I laid my head back on the blanket at the park and my vision grabbed a branch of leaves. The school jazz band concert at the park had finished and people were just milling about, chatting and visiting and laughing because it was a lovely night, and well, why not? Facing the sky, I saw a cluster of leaves that looked like a heart, if I wanted it to look like a heart, anyway. I always want everything to look like a heart because I know it means you are nearby, that you made it look like a heart so that I would know you are nearby. That leaf heart swayed with the breeze, thumping with the beat of my broken heart. I’m with you. I see you. I know you’re here, it said.

I had not been to a concert in the park since before you died. Although we did watch your younger brother sing a couple of songs with his glee group not long after you died at the same park, on the same stage. There was no blanket or picnic that time, though, and we huddled near the edge of the crowd ready to depart as soon as you were done. This was different. Very different.

You see, on Friday, I packed a picnic and made sangria. I spread our blanket at the park hours before the concert began. I left camping chairs, too. Then we went with our picnic and our sangria and the guacamole that I made. We brought the dog and it was so exciting with the people and the music and the sun warming our backs. And being a school event, there were lots of familiar faces. Other people had also set up their blankets hours ahead of time, and I had joked (yes, joked) with them that we’d be neighbors. And I waved at them and even went and said hello when I recognized the neighbor’s daughter from your brother’s second grade class.

Then it was all too much. Too much sangria, too much talking, too much of you not being there. How am I supposed to talk and eat guacamole and talk to the people on the adjacent blanket when you are not here, when you’re never going to be here? When they don’t know that you’re dead. I tried to recover by staring at the leaves, but everyone was laughing and eating ice cream when I just kept thinking about how you were dead and I was pretty sure that no one else was thinking about you being dead. I’m always thinking about how you’re dead and how you’ll never, ever, ever not be dead. That’s when the shouting in my head started. It’s so hard when I’m the only one remembering that you’re dead. It’s easier when other people remember and talk about you. Then it’s not all on me because that’s when it’s too much.

So I stared at the heart-shaped cluster of leaves and tried to make everyone think about you, but they kept laughing and someone who was talking with the family on the blanket next to us was talking about an interview that they went on. And someone at the end of our blanket was talking about what kind of camera they have. And they were licking their ice cream like it was the most normal evening in the world. This is great, we should do it again, my sweet, well-meaning husband said at one point.

The sangria made everything cloudy. Maybe I shouldn’t have had the sangria and maybe I should have eaten the caprese sandwich that I had made for myself because you like caprese sandwiches. I should have eaten more than chips and guacamole. And all of a sudden I was so angry at everyone. The neighbors who talked about their interview. My kids at the end of the blanket talking about cameras and ice cream. My good-natured husband who was having a good time and wondered out loud if we should maybe do this again another time when they have the regular concerts in the park. It was just too much. Probably the most socializing that I have done since you died. Too much. I so often feel like an observer in my own world, watching it unfold around me, unable to move into it, be a part of it. It’s like there are two different planes: I exist in one, the rest of the world exists in the other and we're separated by plexiglass.

Finally the shouting in my head was too much. I stood up abruptly and wavered a bit. I picked up all of the camping chairs and a picnic blanket that we weren’t sitting on and took them back to the car across the street. I put them in the trunk and sat in the driver’s seat for a bit, enjoying the warmth of the air toasted by the sun, trying to figure out what to do next. Husband came over with the cooler filled with all of the uneaten veggies and dip and watermelon and the caprese sandwich I should have eaten. I told him I was angry at everyone. Everyone, he asked? Yes, everyone, I said, and told him that I wanted to walk home.

So I did. When I got home, I watered the plants in the garden and then went into your room and laid under your desk and never told anyone I was there. And I stayed with you until everyone was in bed.

Grief and alcohol

Salty grief snacks

I’ve had beer; I’ve had chocolate covered cookies. And I’m contemplating making popcorn. The trifecta of vices: alcohol, sugar, and salt covered carbs. Apparently that's what happens when the kids are in bed and my husband it out. But I’m not feeling that much better. Only slightly numbed out because of the beer. A little warm. A little forgetful.

Years ago, when Lawyer Friend and I would go out dancing, we shared a single cocktail because neither of us drank much and one of us had to drive, but now I can drink two vodka martinis and I sleep all night and wake without a hint of a hangover. Tonight, a single beer only softens the edges a bit and only for a short amount of time. Living in California, people drink wine. Often daily and it’s normal. But that was never me. I really only drank when I went out. Before Riley died, it was a Moscow Mule. Before those were invented, I'd get a Mai Tai. That is, right up until I had two one evening on an empty stomach and I spent most of the night in the alley behind the restaurant heaving the pineapple-sweetened contents of my stomach onto an unsuspecting azalea bush.

(I've given up on popcorn because of the effort. Instead, like a pile of coins, I have a pile of tamari-flavored rice crackers on the couch beside me...see photo).

Numbing out, feeding Grief sugar and booze and salty crackers; it does help, in some twisted way. It's cliche isn't it? People having been using alcohol to forget for thousands of years. I'm not so special. Giving in to something that makes me feel better, whether it’s only for the moments it’s melting on my tongue, for the seconds I'm crunching it between my molars, or for the 35 minutes it gives everything a slightly warm glow, I like it. I don’t like that I like it, but I do.

It worries me a bit because I come from a long line of alcoholics. I always said it was okay because I didn’t have an addictive personality. I wanted to prove to myself that I didn't have one, so as I was growing up, I noticed that my parents needed coffee to start their days. I decided that would never be me. I still don’t drink the stuff unless I’m driving a long distance. I’ve always joked I’m a social drinker when it comes to coffee. And even then, it’s mainly decaf. 

As for booze, I've only been a social drinker as well. But this is at least the third time in the last few months I've drank alone. 

All that's left... 

And in the last two years, probably more in the last six months, I have found solace in three glasses of wine, three beers, or two vodka martinis. I look forward to them. I crave them. I like the way they remove the grief cuff that is securely locked around my neck and I smile a little more openly. I flirt with my husband a little more vivaciously. I don’t look over my shoulder to see if I’m being seen out and about (because everyone knows that a grieving mother should never do anything light-hearted or entertaining or mildly amusing, especially if it involves being in public, especially if it involves being in public after dark on a Saturday night).

But with the alcohol's permission, or rather encouragement, I have heard the sound of my own laughter. I have worn a sexy dress and stood among strangers dancing in dimly lit bars. I have sang karaoke badly and blotted out all of the months since my son died as Taylor Swift lyrics erupted from inebriated vocal chords.

Each and every time I feel guilt when the alcohol is no longer giving permission to sing or dance or flirt. It pummels me. It's like lying at the bottom of rock wall as an earthquake shakes boulders loose. They crush, bruise, and cut--as they should. I feel anger that I allowed myself the opportunity to be in that place in the first place. I feel angry that my husband was my accomplice in the outing, that he, too, enjoyed this respite from grief with me. After the first time, I didn't talk to him for a few hours. Yet, I’ve done it more than once, more than twice. I order the drinks. I pull it into my lips, letting it saturate my taste buds, waiting for the warmth that follows almost immediately.

Then I stay in bed the next day thinking of my son, feeling bruised, making up for the lost hours when his beautiful life and the horrors of his last days weren't the forefront of my everything. That's not tonight, though; it's just one beer. (And cookies. And salt.) I'm sure it's nothing. Now I'll get back to Netflix, the other place I go to forget.