Waiting.

In a daze I spend a portion of the day; hazey daze.
How can my arms ache with emptiness still when I have such a hefty boy to carry around?
How can my hands feel idle when there are noses and butts to be wiped?
Why do my tears fall when they are landing on the fuzzy head beneath my chin?
How can I dream of the boy I do not have, when the one I do sleeps pressed into me, sick and snotty and breathing heavily?
I can't wait for them to go to sleep/watch a video/go to school....so I can be alone to navigate the fog.
(go away so I can mourn my loss, my loneliness and emptiness; go away so I can mourn the child that is not you. It makes no more sense when written than when it is reality.)

The senses are overwhelmed. Everything is just a little too intense. I attribute this to the tsunami-style waves of emotions under which I am constantly ducking. Let it wash over.
One single emotion can rarely come to the surface. They all remain swirling, muddy, inaccessible.

This is not new, this sense of suspension. I am becoming more familiar with it each year.
It is not unlike the original aftermath. The months right after giving up my child to death; after handing over his still warm but lifeless body to a stranger.

Some wise soul said to me that that is how it would be. For a while. The impenetrable fog. There is no way to fight it. So I didn't. I couldn't.
Sitting amidst its swirling confusion, the damp coldness - it was easier that way. If I couldn't navigate through it, perhaps I could sit and wait for a window in which to find my way out.
I still believe this is one way to avoid killing oneself after such a loss. The true impact of such a loss is too much for anyone to process at once. It comes in doses. It comes forever.
This seems cruel, but I have come to accept it (you know, because I have so many choices about that).
The doses come in bolus form at first. Then more of a time-release thing (you never know when it will release though), and eventually I imagine (or I hope) they will come in some more predictable fashion. As they are beginning to now -near his birthday, his death day - I can see that.

So now here I sit, the poster mama for bad parenting, hating myself for wanting everyone to just go away.
Waiting for the fog to clear just a little bit, waiting to go away to the desert and soak in some hotsprings, waiting for Mofo Day to just be over, waiting for 'me' to come back.