One Way Only

When Evelyn died seven years ago, I couldn't see a future for myself. I couldn't even see one for my surviving children. The picture I'd been carrying of what our future as a family would look like was now irrevocably incomplete. And I couldn't seem to form a new one without her in it. And to be frank, I wasn't sure I wanted to. I wasn't sure for a very long time.

When you're running from the future, there's really no place to go. Except the past. But the past was now an open wound for me. It was not a comfort or a solace. It was only pain. It was only longing. It was only everything I'd wanted and lost. It was a dream, a life I no longer felt connected to. As if the thread between who we were and who we had become was Evelyn, and it was severed in her passing.

Fast forward many years. Somewhere, somehow—and I can't say exactly when this occurred—I began to see a tomorrow for myself. And one after that, and one after that. I began to look to the future again. I could formulate a desire for what I wanted that picture to be under our current circumstances. And it gave me something to live for beyond my children, something for myself. If you're a mom, you may think that's not important. You may think your kids are enough. But they aren't. And it is.

It gave me something more beautiful, more enjoyable, more comfortable to lean into. Something beyond the present moment. Something beyond the pain. Something hopeful. And I leaned into it... hard. I pressed forward into that picture with everything I had because it often felt like it was all I had. It gave me purpose. It gave me drive. It gave me momentum. I could crank my engine and point my wheels in a direction, and that felt like progress. That felt like something else besides the Evelyn-hole, the Evelyn-want, the Evelyn-hurt.

More importantly, it gave me agency. Because losing a child rips your sense of power away. It turns the world upside down and shows you how little control you actually have, how very minor you are. But with a future, I could find meaning. I could create ripples of cause and effect. I could take action. Action toward something. Action plus direction... That's propulsion. (Look, don't quote me on this, I never took physics. And I probably would have failed if I did.) It was more than I'd had going for a long time.

But something has become increasingly apparent to me in the years since. And I know I've touched on this before. I gained a future, but I lost the past. Memory is HARD for me on the other side of trauma. And my memory likes to get particularly reluctant around subjects that might trigger my grief. Which means recalling the years I spent with Evelyn, the absolute most valuable treasures of my life, is very, very difficult. It means recalling the woman I was, the things I enjoyed, how our family felt and acted and related to one another when it was whole—that's all in the vault, under neurological lock and key.

And keeping it there means I can function at a higher level for today. And functioning well today means I can keep building tomorrow. And building tomorrow means I have somewhere else to go. Somewhere that feels better. That doesn't hurt so fucking bad. That holds promise and possibility. Do you see where this is headed? Grabbing on to a future means releasing the past. And not just in that pseudo-psychological, new age way of "Let it goooooo, man." That's the trade off I didn't realize I was making.

And I'm not really complaining because that's still better than the alternative. Because I cannot emphasize this enough—the pain doesn't go away. I don't love her less. I don't miss her less. I don't want her less than I did the day it happened. The difference between then and now is I have a set of coping skills. I have an adjusted tolerance level. I have realistic expectations. I have pain management strategies. One of which is leaning hard into a vision of the future that I have cultivated at the cost of most everything else.

Which sounds an awful lot like running from the past when you put pen to paper. And maybe that's all it is. But again, it's more than I started with.

So where am I going with this? Here's the downside. When your past slips away, and your present hurts like hell (because that's where the pain is happening in real time, that's where the grief actually lives), and your future is kind of all you've got going, then you can never slow down. You can never actually rest. You can never stop or be idle or smell the goddamn roses. And when you've been working so hard to build a future you actually want to live in, pieces of that vision start to become your present reality. Meaning, good shit you wanted or hoped would happen finally does. Goals are met. Things are accomplished. And yet, it's very hard to sit in that win and savor it. It's just as hard to process and integrate the good as it is the bad. Because you have nurtured a habit of forward focus, forward movement only.

Something amazing happened to me last week. Something I have spent my entire life since I was just a child dreaming about. Something I found my way back to desiring through the numb and the dissociation and the agony and the tears. Something I latched onto for dear life. And it just so happens to be something extremely challenging, something where the statistics are stacked against you. But I did it. I made it happen. Or maybe I just got lucky. Either way, it's a BFD for me. My book which was just released became a USA Today Bestseller. And I know Evelyn would be so incredibly proud.

A lifetime of dreaming. Forty plus years. That's no exaggeration. And yet, I cannot sit in it. It's very hard for me to mentally allow it space in my mind and energetically allow it space in my life. Because I go only one way now. Ahead. So where is the moment to sip the nectar of victory supposed to live? If I slow down long enough to be in that moment, guess what is waiting for me. The hole where she was. The place beside me that she was supposed to be in when this happened. The phone call I didn't get to make to her. The celebrating we didn't do together.

And I get the whole she's still with you message. I'm not disparaging the spiritual experience of it all and the comfort that brings some bereaved parents. The comfort it often brings me. But it does not take away, or even diminish, the hunger for something tangible. When we're talking about our kids, we all want more than "a sign". That's fair. That's real. That's a universal truth. I want to see my baby's face. I want to wrap my arms around her and squeeze. I want to smell her hair and hear her laugh when I say something stupid. I want her to roll her eyes at me. And I want her to be there when my dreams come true. I want to lavish the currency of what I've accomplished on her and her brother and sister. And fuck all that I can't.

So here I am, trying to digest the impossible, the unthinkable, the unimaginable in both the best and worst ways. At. The. Same. Time. Because I can't stop to experience the magic without the pain catching up with me. That's just what it is now, my life. A bittersweet, double-edged sword. And if this sounds whiny for someone who just became a bestselling author, let me tell you, I remember when it was just bitter. I remember when it only cut one way (which was just deeper into me). So I am grateful. This is progress. But damn if I don't wish there was a better way. I promise if I ever find one, I'll write about it here.