Six Months

Harry died six months ago today.

He has now been gone for longer than the whole journey, longer than the whole time he was sick. It has passed in a flash. It doesn’t seem possible. How can it be six months since he died? From February 22nd to August 3rd seemed like the longest of times, a lifetime. August seems like almost yesterday, yet not almost yesterday. Time has moved in such strange ways this past year.

Would you believe that when I woke up this morning I didn’t automatically realize what day it was?

In bed, Lydia had asked us if it was a special day today. Was it anyone’s birthday, anyone who we knew? February 3rd? In my groggy, half-awake state, I knew that the day was important, but I couldn’t quite yet grasp why. The significance hid behind the cobwebs of my not-yet-awake mind. Who did we know who was born on February 3rd? I told Lydia,” I am sure it is someone’s birthday somewhere in the world”.

Looking at the clock, pushing 7:30, I quickly got out of bed, “We have to be on the ball today ‘Tuda. It is a work day for Mummy”. And Lydia’s comment was quickly forgotten in the sweep of the morning rush of getting dressed, making beds, eating breakfast, making lunch, and getting Lydia and I out the door in time for school and my bus.

It is someone’s birthday. Lydia’s school friend Callum turns five today. We’re going to his birthday party on Sunday.

It was when I was riding the bus to the University that it hit me. I guess I have been so pre-occupied with dreading all the other anniversaries in February that I had completely overlooked this one. February 3rd, oh, yes, of course, now I know. February 3rd. How could I possibly have forgotten so soon? It has now been six months, a whole half-year, a whole impossible half-year since Harry died.

The tears streamed down my face as I sat riding the express bus to the university and the cobwebs were torn and washed from every corner of my mind. Every moment of the last year flashes through my memory and I think of the last time I held my wee Harry. So skinny, his wee body ravaged from the chemo and the cancer. The last time I kissed his impossibly smooth, papery soft skin. The last time I felt his wee hand grasp my fingers and I weep.

God, I want him back. God, it feels so fucking unfair that he should be gone. Today I can’t pull out my philosophical balms and soothe myself with thoughts of the meaning of his life. Right now, in this moment. I just think about how much I miss holding him in my arms. The perfect weight of him in my arms, always balanced on my left hip. His right arm draped around my shoulder and his left hand tucked protectively down the front of my top, resting just at the top of my left breast, over my heart. As if he just needed one hand on Mummy’s flesh, to make sure I was real.

How can I even begin to put into words the ache I feel? The loss? The sorrow? I cry for me, for Henry, for Harry, for Lydia. I cry and shake my head at the impossibility of it all. How? How? I always ask myself. How did this happen? Why did this happen? How can it be possible that my dear sweet boy has died? And not just died, but died of cancer. How could it have taken my son? Wasn’t it enough that it took my Dad? Did I have to give it my son too??? This isn’t supposed to happen. I am not supposed to have to deal with this.

I know, I know. I can hear Henry’s voice already in my mind. When you get out of your ‘woe is me, victim-mode’ you can come and talk to me. You are not a victim. You are not being punished. Everyone suffers. I could have been born in central Africa, an innocent caught in the cross-fire in the Middle East, poverty-stricken, famine-stricken, family ravaged by AIDS … choose your sorrow. But yet, some days, the weight of my own particular sorrows feels so unfair. And oh, but some days it is so easy to believe in a vengeful god, sitting on his throne up in heaven, raining down another lightening bolt of punishment.

What sin could I have possibly committed to warrant this?

But as soon as I say all this, I stop. I don’t really feel better, fuming and raging this way. It helps for an instant. But when I stop, nothing has changed. The past is still the past and Harry is still gone. It doesn’t do any good to sit and ask questions that can’t be answered. It doesn’t do any good to wallow in self-pity. It gets me nowhere. It doesn’t change a thing and it doesn’t really help. It mostly just leaves me feeling empty and alone.

As we’ve known from the very beginning, the only thing we can control, the only choice we really have, is how we are going to respond in this moment. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like much. But it is perhaps the most powerful choice of all. If I look into the past, I can’t change what happened. If I look too far into the future I feel overwhelmed at the thought of enduring day after day, year after year without Harry.

So I try to do what Harry taught me best. I try to live just today, to only think of today, this moment, this instant. Just breathe and be. Try to just be happy in this instant. It is so hard. But, as Henry says, it is the only thing that we can do to honour Harry’s memory.

So that is what I try to do, to try to get through today. Enjoy the moments of today. But on a day like today, it is harder. Because through every happy thought I can’t help but let through the sad, sad, sad thought:

Harry died six months ago today.