Dates loom large lately.
There is the date when everything changed: March 19, 2013. The
dates of panic attacks we did not know about till after N’s death. The dates in
the past year that we had no idea would be his last September 3 or January 15,
his last birthday or Chanukah. The dates marked in his calendar for trips never
taken, deadlines for term papers never written, and all the blank dates left in 2013. The months
of struggle that we assumed would heal with time and care, while we went on
with our lives.
I see a random date on an e-mail, a photo, a work document
from before March 19 and my heart sinks: that was then, when we were innocent.
We had no inkling of the disaster that would upend our lives. I yearn to go back
to the most ordinary day from that time and hold onto it. To climb the tower,
like in Back to the Future, and turn back
the clock. I would freeze it in August, 2010, before N’s life was forever
shadowed by a friend’s suicide.
As the Jewish new year approaches, I dread the life review,
repentance, and remembrance that I usually look forward to at this season. For
five months of this year, I had no younger son, no relationship to resolve to
mend. Instead, an unaccountable absence, drop-off into an abyss.
I cringe to write or see the dates 1991 – 2013. The narrow
span of his life still stuns me. The dates that will define N
for the world on his gravestone. The dates I cannot bear to write in his
scrapbook because to do so would mean The End.
The weeks and months unravel since his death. The shock of
the first two months, the chilling reality of the next two months, the struggle
to balance bouts of despair with reclaiming our lives. Our calendars are
already filling with obligations for the fall—days without time for grief work,
memories slipping through my fingers. The prospect of the first anniversary of
his death next March and the unveiling of his gravestone—the final public
marking of his passing. All the painful anniversaries to come.
Dates, relentless reminders. Time moving forward without N
in it.
I also saw August not just as August, but as the first August since N left us.
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