The World Stopped
I try to protect my precious little boy from the world, drugs, himself and being like his dad, but I can’t protect him like I want to. I can’t live like this anymore. I walked out of the Pediatricians office with my 11 year old, feeling defeated as I held the prescription for ADHD meds in my hands. How can it be ok to put little kids on these medicines? It scares me.
Being a newly single mom, I have to handle this somehow. With the oldest child hurt by his Dad’s absence and hurting the most inside himself, it spills out to his brothers. It’s not just his problem or even mine, but it’s a 4 fold problem. It includes all the boys. The medicine helped him so much a couple years ago, but he was so young, and still is.
All this I’m dealing with on my own. Even when Grant was here, not once did he ever come to a Dr. appointment for the kids. Not one damn appointment. Wait, there was one. When our baby had an ear infection and it was our date night. He came to that one. What a date. It’s not that he wanted to, but because I was going and he was planning to be with me that night. Ok, one, one appointment. Does not count as being involved or helpful.
It’s all been on my shoulders, the weight of these decisions. It still sits on my shoulders, just heavier now. Grants gone but when he was here, it didn’t feel like he was really here helping either. That’s what I remember now because that’s all I have, him not here. That’s my reality.
Maybe memories are skewed to him not being here at all because he’s not now here. I know this, I get it. It doesn’t diminish the anger. I still curse at him for not being here. All this is going through my head in the 5 steps from the exit door to the sidewalk.
Straight away an eerie feeling comes over me. I look up and the whole world is still. No one is moving. All the cars on the street are not moving. It almost looks as if they’ve been abandoned. This feeling… no one is outside, no one is close. I can’t hear anything. It’s quiet. My son has even stopped moving. I look up to the heavens.
Finally, I scream in my mind! The world has finally stopped. It finally matches how I feel. I’ve been waiting for this moment for the past 11 months, 15 days, 11 hours and 54 minutes. Since that moment my husband took his last breath and I didn’t know yet because I wasn’t there. My world stopped at that moment. So, why didn’t the world around me stop!? And now, in this moment, it had!
I could see the reality of life all around me as it should be, but nothing moved. It was quiet finally. Finally, it all stopped. Finally. I could breathe again for one deep breath as I took in the fresh air from outside, while nothing moved.
In the same instant, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a red car pull up as it stopped, just behind the car in front of it. Why… who is driving that car? I then realized that line of motionless cars were all stopped at a red light. Oh, that explains why they weren’t moving.
I was jolted out of my relief that the world had stopped. I realized it was just me that was stopped, still. Just me not realizing where I was, what I was doing, and feeling again like everything in the world just kept going.
It shouldn’t. They shouldn’t. Didn’t they know my husband was dead!? How could they all be so cruel as to go on living life as if nothing was wrong, nothing had happened? Driving their cars, saying hello, even having the audacity to ask, “How are you?” Really?? How am I?! “Well, my husband just died, I’m fine thanks.” I hate that question now. But, just for a moment, there was relief from all that.
I really thought the world had finally caught up to me where I was. Caught up to stop. No. It was just an illusion. An illusion like the life I live now. I don’t know anything I did before. I just don’t know. And yet, the world keeps moving, so I do too. I looked down at my son, we got in the car and I went to fill his prescription.
