I spent six weeks in Europe this last summer, but you wouldn’t know it from my blog posts. I have drafts and ideas: getting around England, hiking in Cornwall, travel on the Eurostar, amazing Copenhagen, taking Scott to Finland for the first time.
When I go to write it seems— empty.
It was hard to travel to places I’d been with my son, Carson. What I didn’t expect was that it would be hard to go to places he hadn’t been.
We didn’t check in regularly when I travelled, and a “how are you doing” inquiry would often go unanswered. However I would often be prompted to send him a text about something I saw, which usually started a conversation.
So when there was logging at the side of the road in Cornwall this spring, I wanted to send him a picture. I’d done that in Switzerland two years before and he was all excited about it, comparing it to Canada, estimating the volume and value of the logs decked on the side of the road.
I started to change seats to video the young buskers on the Metro in Barcelona, hiphop accompanied by a saxophone! I’d sent Carson video clips of a DJ playing house in Chennai, India, and of a band with a horn section in Barbados. I knew his musical interests, could almost hear his reply about the showboating of saxophonists, or his technical explanation of how the genre was not actually hip-hop, but some obscure variation. Then I realized there was no point, and sat down again.
It was almost too much to bear, when a trio of musicians magically appeared on a rooftop in Brussels, one of them playing the trombone, Carson’s instrument.
Even when I was home, if I saw an exotic car on the road I would text him a picture and he would come back with details that I knew came from his memory, not Google. Sometimes still I see a tricked-out car and think, Carson would like that one. Sometimes I see an older, beat-up compact car and think, that could be Carson’s.
This doesn’t mean I didn’t have a fabulous time in Europe. There were plenty of sights and experiences, great conversations and meals. But Carson travels with me, in my heart, and sometimes it is heavy to realize that is the only place he is, now.
We came back from Europe in time for the anniversary of his death. My daughter was out with her father for the occasion, so I did not commemorate it. I had just spent 4 days with my sisters, at someone else’s celebration of life, and we were all emotionally exhausted.
For a month after I had no energy, not to write, not to exercise, not to do things around the house. I wasn’t sad so much as aimless.
Slowly, I am getting my energy back. I started painting walls in the house. Scott and I have been travelling locally in BC. This week I went kayaking, for the first time since I broke my arm, just before Carson died. It was a little uncomfortable, but I did it. It’s getting better.
As I wrote this, I wondered if I would even post it. We live in a society that pathologizes grief as something that needs to be treated, maybe even cured, with therapy or drugs. At the least it should be quiet, hidden. Some people close to me disapprove of what they see as my wallowing in my sorrow. But like the childless parenting expert, advice from someone who has not suffered this kind of loss has no resonance. Even someone else who has lost a child will grieve, will cope, in their own way, in their own time.
So I continue to exercise my arm, exercise my sorrow. Perhaps someday, when the time feels right, I will join a grief group or go for counselling.
For now, I think about my son, and I write.
Brave Travels 