Can I just sleep through this?
Here again.
The dog makes a great rest for my legs today, propping my knees up so I can’t go foetal and actually fall asleep. I don’t want to fall asleep. Just to rest my eyes.
I could blame the onions. White onions always make my eyes hurt. I was sure I had more red onions, but maybe not. So yeah, maybe it’s the onions.
But I finished cooking over an hour ago. And that doesn’t really explain the tiredness that has overcome my body yet again.
I shouldn’t be this tired. My Fitbit tells me I slept for almost 8 hours again last night. I’ve slept an average of almost 8 hours for the last 2 weeks, since it happened.
So why do I feel tired all the time?
Why do I find myself getting back into bed as soon as I get back from the walk to school… it’s not like it’s a long walk… it’s not like I am not used to walking… but I always seem to need that lie down when I get back.
Some people tell me it’s normal. That if my body needs to lie down then I need to listen to it, and give it that time under the covers.
Others tell me that it’s not normal. That I should consider a call to the doctor. That this might be more than the normal process of grief.
I had a call with the doctor booked for yesterday to talk about my old lady hormone patches. I was going to ask her about the tiredness, the emptiness, the numbness too.
But I was on the train when she called, and accidentally hit the cancel button by mistake. She didn’t call back. And I didn’t really want to discuss death and ageing on the phone on the train with that sad old lady sitting across the table from me.
So I didn’t call back. And I still haven’t called back. Not sure what the excuse is now. Maybe I still don’t want to talk about death and ageing.
But I can’t pretend they don’t happen, can I?
Is the tiredness normal?
Is anything normal at the moment? I know that this is the most normal thing in the world.
The ‘natural order of things’, my brother said.
Not like 17 years ago when Richard died. Just 30 years old. Newly married. So many dreams and plans ahead of him. Him leaving was the exact opposite of the ‘natural order of things’. If any of us should have gone then, it was me… I was on the slow train to self destruction… and it did seem to be speeding up. So not sure why it was him who got to his final stop when I got to carry on. He was 30. I’m nearly 50. I got off that train, but I still feel the pain of the unfairness of it all.
I remember her telling me once that when she left the doctor’s office after finding out I was in her womb, she walked out into the world and couldn’t believe that everything else was carrying on as ‘normal’. Her whole world had just changed. She was about to become someone’s mother. She was no longer simply Christine, she was becoming Mum. Everything had changed.
So how could the world be going on as it always had? Didn’t they know that everything was different?
I remember feeling that way when Richard died. I remember being really surprised to find that my body still needed to do ‘normal’ things. Why was my stomach demanding food when his had stopped demanding anything? How could my eyes be seeing the world that he had left? Why was my womb still preparing monthly for the possibility of conception, when any child I might bear would never know their Uncle Richard.
Normal is a very subjective thing, isn’t it. And it’s not really something I ever understood… normal is what other people do. Not me.
So when people tell me that crawling back into bed at 8.45 in the morning is or isn’t normal, it doesn’t really matter. It’s meaningless. I have no more power over that urge than I can resist the call to empty my bladder, or fill my lungs with air. I sometimes don’t even realise I’m going to do it until I’m pulling the covers over me. The quilt she made for me. Her dressing gown in my arms like a warm blue teddy bear.
Maybe some part of me hopes that if I sleep long enough, I will wake up and find that my life is actually an absurd American drama storyline, and I will wake up and the past year will all have been a dream. I can go to see her, and tell her about the crazy, vivid, heartbreaking dream I had.
The dream in which I learned just how much I love her despite all the times I raged about her. The dream where we became more honest with one another than we have ever been, because why keep secrets when one of you is leaving. The nightmare where I had to help her into bed, sat with her as she slept the sleep of the almost dead, and held her as she took her last breath in this world.
I’d love to be able to tell her about that dream. She’d hug me, make me a cup of coffee, and tell me ‘well, it’s ok, because I’m still here’.
But the cold in my fingers, the murmurs of my hungry stomach, and my once again full bladder tell me that I am very much awake, and that I am not going to wake to tell her about this dream.
She has gone. I am a motherless child. I am 49 years old, but I feel as lost as I did when I was 10 years old, wandering around Hamleys toy store in London, wondering why my parents had left me. “Will the parents of Esther Nagle, please come to the top floor”. How I was teased for all the times they heard that announcement. How I cried with relief and fear when they would come to collect me. Relief that I could be hugged, and I was safe. Fear that I was ALWAYS in trouble… even when I was adamant that they left me looking at the dolls, and not that I left them.
I was so often lost in childhood… distractible, impulsive, dreamy…. Getting lost probably comes with the territory. I don’t know if I ever stopped being lost. I was always lost even as I grew to adulthood, and now apparently to middle age, although I refuse to accept that label. “It’s ten years older than I am,” I tell my son. And yes, Marcus, that does mean that even if I live to be 100, I still won’t be middle-aged!
No matter how lost I was, she was always there, The map that guided me home, My lighthouse. My rock. My anchor. Even when the routes I was taking through life broke her heart, and tested the limits of unconditional love, she was there.
And now she’s not.
She told me ‘It’s all ok’. And I believed her. Even when the lost little girl in me was screaming in opposition. How can it be alright? Who is going to find me when I get lost? Who will hold me when the storms rage through my life and I need her strength, her guidance?
I know the answer. It will still be her. I am her daughter. A strong woman raised me, and raised me to be strong. I will always know what her guidance will be when I need it. I can go to the hills and walk between the trees, and imagine what she would say to me as I process my problems. Her wisdom, love and guidance will never leave me, even though she has gone. Her love made me, and will always be there for as long as I am me.
Can I just sleep through this? was originally published in Be Yourself on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.