petty and spite

They say tragedy makes you wiser. I don't quite know who they are or who deemed them experts in tragedy, but nonetheless, they say tragedy makes you wiser. Even the few therapist I have sat down with since Handsome's passing have held me to a higher, more spiritual level. My friends and family do it too. It's almost like people turn to me as if I'm Gandhi or Buddha. It's like because my son is dead, I'm suppose to know everything now. I'm suppose to be like some 80 year old woman trapped in a 26 yer old's body? 

Losing my son, watching him die slowly, watching him fight to breathe, fight to open his eyes, fight to even swallow his medicine, it didn't teach me anything about life. I didn't walk out of the ER that day, leaving my son's cold, pale, stiff, dead body, enlightened. I haven't moved around the last 2 years with some new sense of spirituality. Visiting my son's grave site does not give me any great, new knowledge. My IQ has failed to increase. I have no insights on the meaning of life. I don't understand a damned thing... about anything. 

I'm not even a better person for it. I'm quite the opposite. And in my pretty little head, I'm rightfully, entitled almost, to be petty and spiteful. I've earned it. 

In one of my many self help books about dealing with the loss of a child, I read that bereavement doesn't actually change people. It heightens their traits. It doesn't create new problems, it just makes their current ones bigger. It doesn't make a happy person depressed or a sober person drink. It makes a depressed person MORE depressed. It makes an alcoholic take another shot. It doesn't ruin marriages. It brings already good marriages closer together. It tears apart already failing marriages. 

Maybe that's why I got a little fucked in the situation. I was never wise. I was never a good person. I've always been naive and a bit... angry. 

Tragedy did not make me any wiser. I'm just more confused. More lost. 

Everyday... Yes EVERY DAY! I have woke up expecting to see my child. As the sun beams through the blinds of my bedroom window and my eyelids begin to feel lighter, I think about the day before me. I think about getting the older two up and ready for school. I plan the way I'll do my daughter's hair and what shoes she will wear with the outfit she picked out. I remind myself that my oldest son forgot to do his homework and we have to rush to get it done before the bus comes. I'll hope the younger three stay asleep long enough for me to make a few phone calls to the bank and to schedule my husband's doctors appointment. I'll fix them breakfast. We will watch cartoons and read books about dinosaurs. All my boys love dinosaurs. We might even go to the park today. I think they'd like to go to the park. I see my 5 year old playing with his two younger siblings on a playground. I see a 4 year old little boy with black hair and blue eyes laughing on a swing, yelling higher! higher! higher! And then I remember, crap the four year old needs his epileptics refilled and oh I should probably wake him up early and go ahead and give him his dose of phenobarbital. And then I remember that it's probably time for his feeds. He gets them every 3 hours through his feeding tube... feeding tube. I remember the picture on my living room wall and the conversation my 5 year old has daily about how his little brother doesn't have his feeding tube in in that picture. The picture a photographer friend gifted me... after the funeral. The funeral of my child who would be four years old. 

I often talk about how I feel alone. I feel like I just don't belong with "normal" people anymore. Talking about everyday things, like the weather or shopping just seems stupid to me. Such a waste of time and breath. It's not that I'd rather talk about the meaning of life or anything like that. It's not that I want to have more intellectual conversations, because I'm in a new category of intellectual superiority. It's just that when I'm in groups of people I don't really think about the weather or shopping. I'm thinking about the person who is missing from the group and I think about would they prefer summer over winter, rain over sunshine. And I'd rather talk about that. I'd rather talk about him. 

Tragedy didn't make me any better than anyone else. I'm not superior to anyone. Yoda, I am not. I'm just a 26 year old, in a 26 year old's body who buried her child. I'm just a person who is going through life, thinking the same thing that everyone else is thinking. Life is cruel and arbitrary. It isn't fair, but I still have to get up everyday, get the older kids off to school, do my daughter's hair, rush through my son's homework. I still have to make breakfast and call the bank and schedule my husband's appointments. I still watch cartoons with the younger 2 and read to them about dinosaurs and take them to the playground. I move through life the same way everyone else does. I'm not enlightened. I'm not smarter. I don't know the meaning of life. My tragedy made me petty and spiteful; two very normal, human like qualities.