The questions I wish you would ask me
Today is the two month anniversary of Hunter's death. Putting my son's name next to the word death still slashes my heart. How can it be?
Questions I wish you would ask me: (and since you haven't, I've answered them for myself)
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1) What do you miss most about Hunter?
I miss our conversations about how the mind works and what helps calm anxiety and lift a dark mood. I miss his frequent phone calls asking for motherly advice. I miss his beautiful smile and shy, ample hugs. I miss him calling me a hippie just to get a rise out of me. I miss the young man who had such compassion for the people in his life, who was always trying to protect his friends from taking things from unknown sources. I miss his boyish pranks and the glee on his face when he figured out just the right way to tease someone. I miss having a future with him, all the hopes and dreams of witnessing his flourishing.
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2) How are you feeling about still not knowing what killed him? This is frustrating and keeps me in a suspended place. Nothing will bring him back yet I want to know if he took something he had been prescribed that impacted him differently because he had six weeks without cannabis in his system or did he take something that had been tampered with? I'm angry that we still don't have a pathology report and it could be another couple of months.
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3) What are you finding particularly hard right now?
What's hard is the strain that grief has put on my marriage. How do we find refuge in each other when both of us are burrowed into our own version of sorrow? We do grief differently and this grief stirs up all the other losses that haven't been digested. Couple that with the isolation of Covid, the stress of running my company, and the fact that we can't see our therapists in person and you get a very messy muck of hypersensitivity and misunderstanding. More than anything we each need support separately from each other-- there is too much to process within our household. One moment we think we are doing well, then the next moment everything goes to shit. We are kind to one another, thankfully, but the stress has taken a toll.
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4) What are you afraid of today or this week? I'm afraid this loss will scar my marriage. I'm afraid of losing my memories of Hunter while also realizing I can't live in those memories. I can't torture myself with remembering the feel of him in my arms at various ages... I don't want to make this harder on myself at the same time I need to allow myself to descend. What if I don't come up? Will I come up? Will I like who emerges from those depths? How do I go that deep without shutting out my wife and friends? I'm afraid I have to do this alone at the same time I know I have to do this in community.
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5) What do you need from your community at this stage of your grieving process? I need opportunities to talk about how I'm feeling. I need invitations to talk about Hunter and about my process. I need ceremony. I need encouragement that no matter how far down I go you will be there to help me up when I'm ready. I need your letters, messages, songs, rocks, gifts, book and movie recommendations. I need to know I can take as long as I need to go into this wilderness-- I need guides. I need a compass and supplies to last the entire journey. I need your love.
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Other questions I hope, at some point, to be asked:
6) What are some of your favorite memories of being Hunter's mom?
7) What are you beating yourself up about at the moment?
8)Where have you found grace in the midst of this extraordinary loss?
9) Tell me about how you experience Hunter now? Can you feel him? Does he talk to you?
10) What is it like when you descend into the darkness?
