Triggers and Tears

Too many tears this week.

 Eric gave my book to a physician’s assistant at a dermatology appointment this week.

 At a previous appointment, after learning he was a NICU doc, she told him her nephew was born with a very similar congenital heart defect to Ben’s.  The boy was now 15-years old was waiting for a heart transplant.

 I cried hearing this because Ben never got that chance. Oh, how I wished to see him whole. I selfishly felt all the pain and longing of Ben not getting that chance.

 This week I also had to pick up a friend at Legacy’s ER door, and as I pulled up, I suddenly realized that I was parked in the exact last place I saw Ben alive as he slipped into a coma in the passenger seat.

 We then watch a TV series I had been waiting for. I had read and loved the book a few years back and heard they’d done a great job on the adaptation.

 But I’d stupidly forgotten a key plot twist, one that was heartbreaking. It took me by surprise like a kick in the gut. More tears.

 Last night we continued watching the Star Trek series Ben and I had so looked forward to. It’s so great. Which makes it brutally sad at times to watch.

 The kind of week where I wish beautiful love stories and silly tv shows didn’t wreak me. I wish that my heart had never been laid open, that I didn’t have to feel loss and pain so acutely still.

Being the one left is like standing all alone on a spent battlefield, still trying to comprehend the outcome, and knowing you have to somehow find the way back home.  It is lonesome work, impossible to prepare for.

 Perhaps the “preparation” is in the living now. In gratitude. I guess I know that. But it feels hard to gather up enough time and enough remembrances. I suspect there will never be enough of either.

 Maybe gratitude isn’t just about finding joy. I can be grateful for tears and worries as well. Glad a boy might not die because of access to new medical advances that Ben didn’t get. Glad there are writers that capture grief so perfectly in a script it breaks the audience’s hearts. Glad for the moments in places where I feel Ben so intensely, honoring his memory with tears.