2 June 2016
The way it is right now:
Things are okay right now. Vaughn is OK. He’s not suffering. He went back to where he was before. I miss him and have some sad difficult emotions.
Soon I’ll go back to where I was before too. I’ll be with Vaughn.
For now, I’m here, and I might as well make the best of it.
May 2016
Vaughn,
It’s one of those blustery nearly-summer early evenings with the fog thinking about blowing in. A bluejay is screeching just outside the door–it’s been perturbed about the cats for days–not sure what its goal is in following them around screeching.
I’ve been working in the garden most of the day.
I’ve been in a period of feeling a little better recently. No major tsunamis for awhile–just some tears. They fell through part of yoga on Wednesday, as they often do.
I think of you so often: when a stupid actor whines about being in jail for a few months; when a skinny kid is sitting on the wall at Safeway where you used to wait for me. Cameron is getting married, and just now I was wondering if I would have liked the girl you would have picked. I liked Bella, but you were so much nicer to her than she was to you. She took you for granted.
I also think about other things–like how to enjoy the rest of my life. I think I need to be less careful–certainly less fearful–in the time I have left.
Is that wrong? To think of my life? To want to be happy? In this moment it seems OK, but in another I wonder what kind of person could ever imagine being happy after losing their child. After losing you, Vaughn.
I miss you so terribly. And there are the tears.
I hope you are at peace darling.
I want to see you. I apologize for every impatient, unkind thing I did or said that made your life harder. xxxxxxxxooooooo
April 2016
April 2016
This is who I am in this lifetime: this is the body and the personality and conditioning I have to experience life. That is the basic equipment I have to experience joy or pain. There’s no point in fighting it. Resistance, as they say, is futile.
Can I embrace it? The experience of this particular human? What is the choice: embrace, or reject and resist. I already know that rejection and resistance hurt/suck/cause suffering.
Time to try a new strategy: embrace. This is the only window for consciousness–why stuff it down?
Let’s see where this consciousness goes–THERE IS NO OTHER CHOICE. This is it. This is my experience.
My limitations and fears are truly opportunities–to accept, explore. To reject them is to pass up what I can learn from this lifetime.
April 2016
Can I get some relief by writing in this journal? An exoneration of my mistakes? The decisions I made, actions I took that now in hindsight I wish I’d done differently? The actions I took or didn’t take that I now look at as tantamount to killing my son?
Do I know that’s ‘unreasonable’? Of course, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because deep inside me I regret some decisions I made. Deep inside I know I’m a fucking idiot. I can’t cover it up with reason.
Why on earth did I agree to let Vaughn go back on Ritalin? Practically encouraged him. I think he knew it wasn’t a good idea. But I robotically listened to that damn neuro-surgeon. Ceded to his ‘authority’ instead of using my own brain to at least research other opinions. Why didn’t I call the psychiatrist from Oregon? I know he would have said to stay away from Ritalin.
I truly believe that was the beginning of the end. It was like saying, ‘here Vaughn, go back on meth. Even though you yourself have doubts.’
Why?? So he could concentrate on his schoolwork?
And all the other bad decisions I’ve written about.
They are all lying there, still, under this veneer of ‘healing’. So I feel a little better on the surface, but numb underneath.
I probably need to forgive myself. But how can I? How can I forgive myself for killing my baby?
Nancy says all parents, no matter the circumstances, feel guilty for not protecting their children who died. Again, a rationalization that smooths the surface of my mind but leaves my certitude about my stupidity and carelessness intact.
All I can hope is that Vaughn forgives me. And I know he does. But that doesn’t restore him to me. That doesn’t assuage my loss. I can’t help feeling that if I hadn’t made those mistakes I could have my son back. I could have had what I want, yes selfishly perhaps, what I want: my son back with me.
27 March 2016
Vaughn–Easter Sunday. Two days before March 29th. All day you have been skipping through my mind. I remember you most as wild and free–a skinny beautiful little boy ducking through the green grass and shrubs up at Temples searching for painted eggs. You always had a certain ragged elegance up there. Maybe all you kids did. I remember you my love–lost (or would it be so much more accurate to say ‘found’) in the moment, the sun and shade playing on your skin.
I hope those were beautiful times for you Vaughn. I hope you were as free and wild as I remember.
March 2016
Feeling again the self-hate, the criticisms. On a bit of a different level–but still there.
It’s as though my self-loathing is so pervasive that were it not there–there would be no me.
Kind of like the colonies of bacteria that live in us and on us. If you took out the ‘human’, you would still see the shape of the body formed by the bacteria. If you took out the ‘real me’ you would still see my shape in the form of my contempt.
5 February 2016
I’m in my little house and I feel…okay. Thank goodness for this house. It comforts me–gives me refuge. It’s clean, and smells fresh now that the cleaning product smell has worn off.
As Leo and I walked around the Laguna today I thought about being an enlightened asshole. I thought: that is my goal, to be an enlightened asshole. Of course, if I were really an enlightened asshole I would understand that I already am an enlightened asshole, and don’t need to work toward it.
Still…shouldn’t there be a book: The Enlightened Asshole?
I’d like to write it, except I’ve only got the first half down so far 🙂
29 January 2016
A moment of calmness.
What prompts it? I’m still doing my usual bullshit–wasting the morning doing a sudoku.
Yet I become aware of a stillness in the house. My three little pets keeping me company and bearing witness. A soft, even light suffuses the room. The rain drips, unevenly, from the eaves as it has so frequently for weeks. The lines of water on the window have a silvery glisten, and the bare Magnolia tree, just beginning to bud, spreads its branches–seeming to accept the soft rain with quiet grace.
Well, how else would a tree react? And yet I see it–I feel it.
It’s an awareness that steals over me in these moments. Some sort of acceptance. A gap in the constant low-level judgement from my mind.
Ah…thank you house. Thank you tree, and rain. Thank you my furry co-passengers. And thank you my self, for reminding me, sometimes.
8 November 2015
It’s as though my soul has been tied behind a run-away car and dragged naked down a rough road.
I need to recover. My soul needs to be soothed and rested so I can heal.
Watching TV and eating crap in a desperate attempt to distract myself from my pain is misguided. It can’t and won’t help me.
I need to TRULY LISTEN to the part of me that knows better. The part of me that loves me and wants the best for me.
It will mean breaking some habits. But I can start slowly, and each time I’m successful at doing something healthy and good for my soul, I will reinforce that action.
If I was pulling for Vaughn to have the strength to beat drugs, I can pull for myself to start giving my soul the room to heal
7 November 2015
Acceptance…of it all
the pain, knowing it will be here forever,
the beauty, that Vaughn will never see, of a sun-lit vine and its restless shadow, entwining and shifting in the breeze,
my guilt, which is not rational but will nonetheless continue to live in the corners of my mind,
my uncomfortable anger and envy of everyone who still can hug all their children,
my relentless desire, to live…and laugh…despite it all
Vaughn's Mom 