When I Least Expect It
Late last month I touched on the continuing fallout from C's illness. Pieces and issues around that time continue to surprise me.
On Friday, C brought home this year's school picture. It's a fine picture. Not fabulous, not awful, just fine. I went to put it in the frame in the living room that holds all his school pictures-I've just been putting each year's picture in front of the previous year's picture so they all stay together.
This time, though, one more photo wouldn't fit. So I took all but the newest one out and went to file them away. As I walked into the study, I flipped through them and stopped in my tracks.
You know how kids loose their chubbiness in their cheeks over time, and it's usually only in retrospect that you can see that chunkiness fade over time? C lost all of it all at once, when he was sick. I knew that on some level, but seeing it represented visually was something that, somehow, I had avoided seeing.
C's first grade photo - six months before he got sick - is great. He's a chubby cheeked six year old with a big smile. C's second grade photo- six months after he was sick- is also good...but there is absolutely no fat in that kid's cheeks or face. Gone. Looking at subsequent years, his face retains that no-fat look.
I went to look at M's pictures, and in those you can sort of see the slow thinning out of the face. Some of it is still to come. It's very different.
After putting the photos away, I sat down for a few moments. I was on the edge of a panic attack again. I've mostly learned how to manage when I feel the anxiety increasing. I'm so thankful for the health of my family, but the fear of what could happen is still very real to me.
I thought I was doing so well processing all this. Guess there's a bit more to go.
3 comments:
Wow.
I think that most of us know in our heads that life is out of our control - that we are mostly helpless. I know that in my head. But I don't know it in my heart, which is where you were forced to acknowledge it. There's a difference in knowing intellectually that we walk a tightrope and in truly understanding that we walk it.
I'm so sorry. I can't fully understand how this feels for you, but I can try to imagine. (and I don't want to). So sweet/sad about the sudden thinning of his face.
I'm so glad C is fine. He's such a joy - such a smart and sweet kid. Q was just talking about him the other day, and we were wishing that you all lived closer to us.
Don't try to imagine how it feels. Really. It's not a feeling I wish on anybody. I would much prefer everyone I know NOT understand this feeling.
Last summer at an even we were talking to an acquaintance about C. He remembers when C was sick (though we didn't and don't know him well), and I said something about how it totally changed us and things like "good colleges" and all that just don't matter anymore. If he's healthy and happy, none of that matters. This acquaintance said something like, "If his illness is what got you to that point, then great," and I realized that he completely missed what I was saying. We all (or most of us) from the moment our kids come into this world, talk that talk. We all believe that we believe it. But when something so catastrophic happens, it's that difference between understanding/believing something intellectually versus in your gut and heart. He didn't really get it - but do I really want him to "get it" on the same level I do? No. I don't want him - or anybody - to go through that kind of experience that we did with C.
As much as C's sudden loss of chubby cheeks saddens me, I much prefer that to what the possible alternative was....
HUGS. It has its own time, this remembering and processing...LT
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