Series Finale

I was just watching the ER finale.

I used to watch it almost religiously. But after C was sick, I just couldn't. I was too familiar with what they were doing when they acted out intubating patients, chest compressions, placing chest tubes and various other procedures. It was at least three years before I could even watch a glimmer of the show - it's too realistic. This is actually the first time I've watched an entire episode since before C was sick. I didn't realize it was the series finale until I read it on the local news site.

The piece on the news site was in reference to a particular ER episode from the first year called, "Love's Labor Lost." If you ever watched the show, I know you remember it. But what the writer of the article wrote about it was very interesting:

"It wasn't the gore or even the reminder of how tenuous pregnancy can still be in this modern age. It was how writer Lance Gentile and director Mimi Leder had collaborated to cause the whole terrifying thing to creep up on me. To remind me that tragedy is not necessarily accompanied by a spray of bullet-shattered glass or a solemn diagnosis. Tragedy lurks in the corner of every decision, every bit of hurried advice; tragedy doesn't always occur, sometimes it just accumulates - until it fills the room and then empties it."

Like clockwork, now that C's birthday has happened, I have a short but intense lead up to the anniversary of his illness. It's on my mind constantly, and I question myself more intensely than at other times. C's crash was an accumulation of events, a perfect storm of sorts. Just one tiny different decision and it could all have gone so differently - in either direction. And so, more than at other times of the year, I agonize over decisions I should make on autopilot, almost becoming paralyzed by the enormity of everyday life.

If the pattern of the last few years holds, I have about a week of this to go. A very busy weekend will help me get through some of it; the need to finish planning games and such for S's 5th birthday part should help, too.

Still, it's an anxious time, hoping with my whole being that what is accumulating is not tragedy but triumph, and trying without any possibility of success to steel myself just in case it's not.