Susan Senator

This is grief, this is what it looks like and feels like. I was okay for September and October, and then I got distracted in November, and then, when I pulled away from distractions, It faced me square in the face. I had delayed my pain by lighthearted distraction and now, here it is.

Some of you will think that I’m wallowing. Well, think it. But I don’t want to hear it. That won’t help.

Some of you will tell me that this is a natural phase of life. That at 18 kids leave home. That Nat may have wanted to leave, hence the aggression.

Don’t tell me that anymore, I don’t want to hear it.

Truthfully, it is going to be hard for anyone to tell me anything. This is as bad as 1993, the diagnosis year. This is the Letting Go year. It is more like ripping out.

Nat may be 19, but he is also not 19. I don’t know for sure what his inner life is, but I do know that he is living somewhere else other than my home, and I always swore I would never ever send him away and I did.

Not only that, I sent him away without preparing him right. He had a social story, but he did not have enough time to really memorize it, for it to sink in. Because if he had, he would have probably become anxious. I didn’t want him to become anxious. I didn’t want that for him, but I also didn’t want that for me. I could not bear another phase of fear, and worry about unpredictable rage. Arm-biting, screaming. Being stuck in our house.

I can’t talk or write this away, but I feel compelled to get it out anyway.

I have just had a weekend away with Ned, Max and Ben. We were in New York just rambling around. We floated from thing to thing. It was easy, so easy. It was too easy. I felt Nat, I kept thinking about Nat. We are five, not four! We are kind of pretending to be four.

But I also had fun! I did not always think of Nat! I had so much fun.
And the other two need to have this kind of lovely time. Why does it have to be this way?

What the hell kind of life is it that children are born to us and we cannot help them? Is it really just all random, the way Ned and Max believe? What about what I believe? I believe in God. I believe that life is wonderful, sweet, colorful, musical. What about the five senses? And delphiniums? And Beethoven, Eric Clapton, and Natacha Atlas? What about M&Ms;, or getting well again after a sickness. What about making love? The first time you see your baby?

He is my baby. He is a man, but he is mine and he is not ready to go. I am not ready for him to go, I am not ready to be this old. But I feel like this is the better of two choices. In this world, you have to set up your child as best you can for the future. Even for the present, or because you know how the past went.

When you let go, to me it feels like abandonment. So I am grieving for that.