Re-entry

Yesterday I went back to work for a few hours. My company has been incredibly understanding in giving me the time I need. Colleagues have pitched in to cover my work and I am so, so grateful because I can’t imagine how I could have focused on work before now.

And truthfully, I couldn’t really focus on work yesterday either. I realized in the middle of a meeting that my brain was not in business mode and I spent the rest of the day worrying that it would take me weeks or even months to be able to focus on work again, and at some point they would have to let me go because I would be worthless. But then today I worked a few more hours and attended a (virtual) meeting with a client and I think I did okay. So maybe I’m not a lost cause.

Later today my mom and Charlie and Jackson and I drove into Burlington for Jackson’s therapy appointment, and then Charlie waited in the car while my mom and I went to Phoenix Books (a great indie bookstore) and we walked around and as I looked at the new releases, I kept seeing things Andy would like, including the new Erik Larson book (“The Demon of Unrest,” about the beginning of the Civil War); “Chaos,” about the Manson family (we’ve both read multiple books about them); and Cher’s biography.

I almost always bought him books for Christmas and his birthday, because he could be tough to buy for but I could usually find books he liked. And I started spotting those books and it made me cry. I tried to hide it so no one would notice even though it was difficult to hold back. And I thought about how I really need to see a therapist to manage all of this but the first appointment I can find with a new therapist is January 7, the day before my birthday. It’s also the 15^th anniversary of my first date with Andy.

I called UVM’s bereavement counseling department today and left a message for the guy who was supposed to call me back 2 weeks ago to schedule bereavement therapy for the boys. I also talked to someone in outpatient psychiatry who told me there is a bereavement group I could join, and they had availability in June. So I was crying in the bookstore, wishing I had a therapist I could talk to about all of this, and wishing I could get bereavement support for the boys and me, and I realized there was a self-help section so I should just self-help myself until I can get in to see someone.

I found 2 books about grief and grieving and the first one was more of a memoir – not a hauntingly beautiful memoir like “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion, but an overly sentimental memoir, or at least that’s what I got from skimming it for about a minute.

I hope people are not this dismissive of my memoir once I get it out.

But the second book about grief was called “It’s OK That You’re Not OK” and I picked it up and read a couple of pages and started crying again so I figured that was the one I should get. The subtitle is pretty good too: “meeting grief and loss in a culture that doesn’t understand.” And what sealed the deal was the dedication at the front of the book: “For those who are the stuff of other people’s nightmares.”

A few years ago, a friend of a friend lost her husband. They had kids around the same age as the boys. I’d never met her, but I knew of her and saw a lot of Facebook posts about her loss and I thought it was such a horrible tragedy, but I tried not to think about it too much because it was just too hard to fathom. And now here I am, and I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t want to think about this too much because that’s how we protect ourselves. It’s okay. I don’t want to think about it either and I’m living it.