It's interesting, for reasons unknown to me, I quite honestly feel the need to write. The mood does strike often and I can usually get the opening done in my head. Then the direction/thought disappears... much like the smoke from an extinguished match. Out goes the flame and you’re left to watch the smoke swirl and twist upwards and right before your very eyes (or in my case eye) it just disappears from view… literally vanishing.
Poof!
The physical make up, least that of what’s visible, of smoke is interesting. It can be controlled (smoke rings) and made to “flow” with little to no effort, while at the same time it can hang suspended just waiting to be acted upon.
Sorry, a bit of digression… I am prone to them.
Of course how would you know…? You’d have to be clairvoyant to know if I was digressing.
Now to be fair, I've been to this fiesta many a time and on the odd occasion I do sit down and go through the motions (opening the laptop and so on) and actually put fingers to keyboard, I tap away the opening with a great mental eagerness. Hoping that the next line will form before completing the one presently being typed… only to have my fingers sit poised on the keys saying, “Well…?” awaiting some mental output to wander on down to them.
The keyboard/computer then just sits there mockingly waiting to be acted upon. I end up staring at the “page” that I've tapped out a handful of words, scanning them over, only to have it sit there blankly staring back… cursor (in mocking cahoots with the computer) ceaselessly blinking, almost in time with the seconds, counting out the time I'm wasting stymiedly staring at it. I read it over and over trying to jump-start my thought process or force my way around the blockade that has formed. Most often it’s the delete key and a closing of the lid.
Sometimes it is different… sometimes things actually go somewhere. Whether it’s a direction that you (the reader) want to go is only known well… by you… the reader. Ironically the thing I don’t know is when that special sometime will strike. Not until I go through opening the computer and putting fingers to keys is it exposed or known. It is because of that unknown, I often take a pass at the attempt.
I am not a reader, which is to say I could read, but don’t derive any type of pleasure from it. I can take it or leave it… mostly leaving it. So then why do I write, or want to write? One can plainly see it’s been over a year since I've posted anything. I don’t know… feel like I have something to say? When push comes to shove though, to the “masses” it’s pretty pedestrian. So it stands as a pretty good question; why do I write or why do I want to write? It’s never anything earth shattering. All those writings stopped a little over four years ago when the shattering subject matter ended and I (we) were left to pick up the pieces of lives now shattered. Not to sound too terribly redundant, but that’s when we all became broken.
See when Emmah was sick and in the hospital I had something to write about… and I did. It was a way to document and a way to keep everyone up to date on the latest goings on. I suspect in some way it was cathartic. I hated the subject matter, but it came easy… now not so much…I’m broken and if I talked about what is going on in the Gudeman house today, it’s much the same that was going on then. Nothing seemingly has changed; we’re just all a little older.
{Talk about timing… I’m listening to music as I write and as I typed out that last line nothing seemingly has changed the song by the Talking Heads… Once In A Lifetime was playing and as I typed out that line, the line from the song that was playing… “same as it ever was”… much like our lives.}
Except with one glaring exception…
My writing has taken on a collective disjointedness… I've written a time or two (in one form or another) that Emmah is missing from our physical lives… that is the core of the problem. I kind of get tired of writing about it and you my readers (imaginary or otherwise) must get tired of reading/hearing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah… we've heard this before, can’t you write about anything else? Seems that I can’t, least not without some type of an interjection and I won’t apologize for that either, nor do I expect that my (imaginary) following would require one. I have other children, my life continues… what to do.
I ponder a lot… well maybe not a lot, but I do ponder with regularity and let’s just leave it at that. During one of my pondering sessions something came to me the other day.
Caution… digression to follow. In our house the phrase “the other day” is used by Julie to often mean the day before the current one, in other words, I argue (take the position) that the day previous to the current one has a word for it… that word is yesterday. Julie’s retort is that “the other day” works. Technically I know she is right, additionally I know I am splitting hairs on this too, but I contend that yesterday is the more “correct” expression.
To me it’s like saying the day after Monday…
You mean Tuesday…?
Yeah, Tuesday…
Why didn't you say that in the first place…?
Saying the day after Monday to mean Tuesday is not incorrect, but I’m sure Tuesday would like to get its props and its name out there. Otherwise why not call it second Monday or Monday part Tue?
Back to my ponderance from the other day… and no, not yesterday... I got to thinking about how even after four years, the void is still just as large as it was when it was created that morning, the morning of the 10th of February. I've conditioned myself to steer clear of it and in many ways I've learned not look its way… in other words, I sidestep it as best as I can. Even so, it frequently hunts me down and seeks me out. That’s not to say that I can’t get out of its way, but every so often it catches up and sucks me right in. Then it’s an endless free-fall in a bottomless hole that takes a celestial intervention in helping me find my way up and out.
I don’t always understand how my thought process, or lack thereof, works. I’m not sure how I go from one thought to the next or (often) to nothing at all… disjointed.
Anyhow… I got to thinking about all those I have met and come to know that share the same story, walked that same path and ended up at the same shitty place. People like me/us whom have lost their child to some unrelenting ravenous disease and have these voids in their respective lives. They have fallen and picked themselves up and pulled themselves time and again out of that hole. Making it out guarantees you nothing, least of all a guarantee of not falling back in. That hole never shrinks in size and it never seems to be in the same place and it can suck you in without warning.
As horrible as it was and the aftermath continues to be, we know that our children are no longer physically with us and importantly we know why. At least we all know what happened to our children. What about the person whose child isn't physically with them and they don’t know why? The people who have had their children wander off, run away, remove themselves from the family or worse yet be taken away. Abduction… the word is almost equally as frightening as hearing “we found a mass”.
That made me pause to think which is worse… knowing or not knowing?
Having to go through the rigors and the roller coaster of a ride of having (ultimately) a terminally ill child and having (albeit not a good one) an end, at least there is an end. How is it to live your life in perpetual state of worry and fear as to the safety of your child or if your child is even alive? I maintain that in spite of the outcome of Emmah’s illness, I think I’d still prefer it to not knowing.
Although, if I look at it from another point of view one can spend many years wondering if your child is (going to be) okay and she is right in front of you. The parent of an ill child is privy to both. There is a time upon which a tipping point is reached where the not knowing becomes knowing. It comes without warning and you are left to watch the transition as it happens real time.
Being bedside as your child fights through every poke, puke, operation, procedure and set back and then dies right before you is the worst thing in the world to witness… especially since there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. I might have to rethink my position.
While it took longer, just the same, she vanished as the matches' smoke.
I’d be negligent in not mentioning Emmah’s birthday… well technically I was negligent, I missed posting a blog post on her birthday. So some 16 days after the fact I sheepishly will make good on it… she turned 18 on the 10th of this month. Emmah you deserve better from me, but I was stuck in the ever present wake of your absence and I was having a tough time finding my way out. Knowing you, least as I remember you, you’d forgive me. 18… what an age to be, it’s hard to not think about all the things that she might be doing were she here with us.
Until I am where you are, I will have to say it from here,
Happy Birthday Emmah… I miss you.
