The Body Keeps the Score

 July 4, December 1, January 8, November 28, May 21, June 6, June 16. These are all anniversaries my body celebrates without my consent. 

My body does a lot of things without my consent: random nausea, migraines, periods. Things I have no say over and can do little about. I know the dates are coming, and I can brace myself for them, but generally speaking, I just have to push on through to the other side. 

Some of these are grandparents. All of mine have passed. A result of being a late in life baby. One grandparent passed when I was very young, and though my last grandparent lived to be late into her 90's, she died in 2012. 

Another is my dad. None of us saw that coming, though we did feel like we got additional years with him after his aneurysms in 1998. It still doesn't feel like enough, since he was only in his 60's and we were only in our 20's and 30's. 

The other dates are trickier. By all accounts, I have no rights to grieve them. My body shouldn't mourn them. I wasn't that close to them in life, so why does my body remember them? They were both troubled young men who I watched from the periphery of their lives, and enjoyed seeing their successes and was saddened by their frustrations. Our connections were tenuous. 

The June 6 one was the same year as Dad, and so that's very likely why. My body was in "let's make this particular young man, who is special for this particular reason, even more special" mode. So every June 6, my body marks the anniversary of his death. 

The November 28 one was special, not just because that's my birthday, but for other reasons. I feel like I'm surrounded by ghosts on my birthday. Ghosts of those who should be there, celebrating with me, but who aren't for various reasons. I grow older and they don't. I surpassed one within a few hours of his death and will hopefully surpass the other in about twenty years. The November 28 young man was in my life for just a little while, but he left his mark in a special to me way, so I was sad to hear of his death. It was the beginning of all the deaths of 2009, all the memories my body made. All the grief my body is carrying on a cellular level. 

It's not just death that causes bodies to keep score like this. Trauma can do it. I'm fortunate enough I haven't had anything like that in my life that my body has felt needed tracking. Though it does feel the need to almost completely ruin May and June because of Dad. Every major event in those months is tinged with grief for him. (It doesn't help that a lot of things happen in those months: our anniversary, end of school programs he would have wanted to be at, Father's Day, his and Mom's anniversary, his birthday.) 

My body just decided at some point that May and June are Grief Months, so we shall Grieve in those months. I hurt. I have migraines. I'm nauseated. I just want to sleep all. the. time. Very little tastes good. I can cry at the drop of a hat. I have almost zero motivation to do anything but what I want to do (watch tv in bed while cross stitching, mainly). It's almost like being in the second or third week of the aftermath of a death, when the initial shock has worn off and you're just weepy, and at loose ends. But for two months every year. I don't love it. 

Grief isn't a timeline, where you go through first one stage, then the next and so on until you're done, and I think people who haven't had to deal with it in a major way may not fully understand that. It's a cycle and sometimes you bounce around the circle. One day, you may be fine. It may have been years, then you look up and something small happens, and *bam* you're irrationally furious or desperately sad or would be willing to kill your next door neighbor to have that person back, or to have had that horrible thing not have happened. You think you're through with the worst of it, but there's always going to be tinges of every part of every stage left over. Your body keeps track of how everything felt to pull back out on your Grief Days to remind you...and sometimes on in between days. Depression will do that, too. 

I've also managed to develop a somewhat supernatural ability to pick fiction books with dead fathers and father figures during the May/June period. I can't remember the actual number, but it was something like 75% of the books I read last year during that time frame had dead or dying fathers. This year, I have mostly avoided fiction, sticking to interesting podcasts and non-fiction books, and I've still managed to have two books with a dead father and a dying father figure and a movie with a really sweet father/daughter relationship that made me weepy. I read five books in May. And the book club selection for June apparently has a woman working through her father's death. The meeting is a few days before Dad's birthday. I'm working up to that book. It's a weird talent I've developed. 

Sometimes, we just feel sad, and there's no real reason for it. And sometimes there is. We're sad because our body is reminding us of someone we loved who is gone now. Our bodies keep track and keep score, even without our asking. Death, and trauma, scars us, maybe not physically, where everyone can see it, but deep down, where we may not even realize it, and sometimes those scars surface in the form of tears, or melancholy, or lethargy, or just feeling "off." So if someone is off, it may not be anything they can really put their finger on. It may just be their body taking over for the day without their consent. A long ago date inscribed on their internal calendar that their conscious mind has long forgotten, but their internal calendar never will. 

To Plano and Back

 The pandemic has really taken it out of me. To be fair, it's taken a lot out of all of us, I'm not special in any way. It's just a reason for limited (or no) updates. 

Eden had her six month check up on Monday the 22nd and physically, she's doing great, as usual. She's ticking along and her doctor is very pleased with her growth. She still expects that as she grows, more stress will be put on her heart and someday down the road, we'll have to look at some kind of surgical option, but for now, she's doing well and there's nothing new on that front. 

Pandemic wise, her recommendation is for Austin and I to be vaccinated (we are) and to continue to wear masks and socially distance around people who aren't and when we're in public (we do, for the most part...if I'm outside or if it's just for a few minutes, I'll generally take my mask off, since I know I'M safe and the CDC recommendation for gatherings of groups of vaccinated and unvaccinated people is that the unvaccinated people wear masks, not the vaccinated). In Eden's case, she is not to be around people who aren't vaccinated UNLESS they are masked, though she can be around healthy unvaccinated children (no coughs, sniffles, or diarrhea). Yes. I realize this can be confusing. Don't worry, I understand the ins and outs. 

I asked about antibodies from actually having COVID and she said that those antibodies aren't good for more than about 4-6 months, so they need to have the shot or wear a mask. Fair enough. I'll keep that in mind as we move forward into the summer. 

We are also not allowed to be in groups larger than 10-12, including us, which counts out most of the Walke family gatherings, since a simple family dinner is about 15 people. So, we can work up to those, but we can't do any full family gatherings just yet. We can do half family gatherings (curse of the big family) but my family is understanding and we'll meet up in smaller groups and hopefully by the end of the summer, we'll work up to all of us. I haven't figured out all the details of working up to all of us just yet, but I will. Once all of us adults are vaccinated (and really, only two of my nieces and nephews are under 16 and ineligible for the vaccine) it'll be MUCH easier. And if we do some back yard cookouts, that'll be easier, too. 

Because of how the boys have become towards Eden behavior wise, Dr. S said they absolutely need to go back to school, wearing masks, of course. So, they are going back to in person school on April 5. Elijah got excited, Asher wasn't at first, but he got more so the more he thought about it. I think. We'll see. It'll definitely be an adjustment. Some of the other kids were out of formal school for a few weeks at most. Ours have been able to do school on their own schedule for over a year at this point. So getting up at 10am, taking breaks whenever they want, wearing the same clothes for 4 days in a row (in spite of my and Austin's repeated pleas to change their clothes), working on whatever they want to whenever they want to, talking constantly...it'll be a huge adjustment. For them and their classmates and teachers. 

I took them to the local fabric store and let them pick their fabrics for their masks and a friend of mine and her mom are making their masks so that will be great for them to have custom made masks that they will enjoy, hopefully. We also have to get them some school clothes (we didn't at the beginning of the school year because I knew they wouldn't be staying in school, so they desperately need clothes that fit) and decent haircuts and a few other things, so the next week will be a little busy getting ready for school. 

Eden will not be returning to school with the boys because it isn't safe for her. Our boys and one other girl (I think she still is, I'm not sure) are the only ones wearing masks. Dr. S wants us to wear masks the rest of this year and into next year, regardless of what the schools and government are saying. That's going to be the tricky part, I think. She did say we'll see what's going on in September and may reevaluate, but she thinks the new strains are going to show up more over the summer as people relax and travel more, and since she's part of some study there at the hospital, and sees COVID patients regularly, I trust that she knows what she's talking about. Eden is not higher risk for COVID, but she is higher risk for MIS-C, and if she got that, she wouldn't just go into the ICU here in town, she'd go into the ICU in Dallas or Plano, likely via Careflight. And we don't want to deal with that. We'd rather just not deal with COVID, thank you. 

Since Dr. S wants the kids to all wear masks at school next year, Rebekah, who we were on the fence about what to do with her, is going to be staying in MDO for another year instead of starting Kindergarten a year early like we had thought about. She's intellectually and academically ready, but we feel like it's asking too much to start school a year early AND ask her to keep a mask on all day. She's ok to stay at MDO without a mask, and her teacher there has offered to start giving her Kindergarten worksheets next year, since she already gets harder sheets than the other kids and they're a breeze for her. She can manage a mask for a while when we've taken her into a store, but an entire school week feels like too much. I'm keeping my hopes up for the 2022-23 school year to be more normal. Perhaps enough people will be vaccinated by then that kids won't have to wear masks to school. 

After hearing about all that we've been dealing with, Dr. S "prescribed" at least two vacations for us this summer. So we're working on that, too. Asher voted for an amusement park, but I vetoed that until they're all a little older. Elijah voted for out of the state. I vetoed that because that seemed too far and ambiguous and when they clarified with beach (Rebekah's vote) I said an out of state beach was too far. Eden wanted to go to her friend's house. So, they came to a consensus and the kids want to go back to the beach. We're looking at either going back to Galveston or going to Port Aransas. It's about the same distance of a drive, we just need Austin to look into work stuff and get back to me with when is a good time. 

I think that's everything. It's been a long few months, what with the holidays and snow storm and school. We were really lucky this trip, because Eden's favorite person ever, Mrs. Dot, went with us. She was so helpful in keeping Eden fed and talking to me to keep me awake when the drive got boring (which it didn't really since we had rain there and back, plus the massive dust storm). It was so nice to have another adult along for the ride and Eden loved having Mrs. Dot there. We got to see Cari for dinner, and since I hadn't seen her in months, that was nice. It's the little things you miss in a pandemic: road trips with friends, dinner with your sister, weekends away with girlfriends, family vacations to the beach. Hopefully, as much as 2021 has sucked so far, we can get some of that back.