The Sob

I often feel like I am carrying a giant sob in my chest. It starts in my stomach and wells up into my throat. I feel it behind my eyes. It drowns out other sounds so that often I don’t hear what people are saying clearly, though I can’t think of what sound the sob makes. It’s more of a muffler. Today is one of those days. A local boy missing for two weeks found dead. Horrific footage of war smuggled in a tampon out of Maripul. And the shootings come so close together I can’t process one before another is in the news. I found myself out running errands yesterday looking over my shoulder, checking exits, making mental notes of where I would go if a shooter came into the store. I follow my kids with my eyes as they walk into their schools. And I miss my son Jonathan. I wish I could say I don’t know what bereaved people are going through. I know it isn’t the same for everyone, and sometimes I struggle with guilt over my legitimate feelings. After all, I am sitting in a clean, warm home. I have food, clothing, and safe skies. For now. For now. But I know it can all change in minutes. The “safety” is deceptive.

I grew up practicing for natural disasters. My dad, a naval veteran, worked at a nuclear power plant in earthquake country, and we drilled. We had a rope ladder. We had a wrench stored by the water shut off. We had a giant tub of water in our garage. And we had a shot gun in a location unknown to us kids. But I knew it was there. From a young age I figured that any anxiety I felt meant I just needed to prepare more. How prepared is prepared? For someone with anxiety, you are never prepared enough so you are always anxious. No amount of preparation can ease the anxiety that comes from tragic loss, especially when you thought you were prepared, and it happened anyway.

I’ve been thinking a lot about brains. My brain. My son’s brain. Broken brains. Broken hearts. How brains are like micro earths complete with fault lines and foul weather. Some days I feel like I have an image to offer young people to help them understand their minds, to prepare, practice mindfulness, healthy coping skills, build support systems, all that jazz. I even get excited sometimes and think about whether to create a book for really young kids, or maybe a graphic novel. Then I get slammed with the sob. The sob sometimes lasts for days, and creating is almost impossible. I have brief moments of feeling imaginative, like when the sun peaks out for two minutes on a nasty weekend. I can see a way to go creatively. I sit down to work. But it’s gone. I have to resist the urge to despair. I have to be very careful what I say to my kids so that I don’t say something like, “Nothing we do matters, we have no control, but I love you anyway.” I have to edit myself to the “I love you” bit. Because that is true on all the days.

…

Now it is a few days later, and I’ve come back to this post to finish it. It is seventy degrees, the sun is shining, and the sob has been with me all day. This is not something I can give due time to process and check off the list as done. The sob is like a chronic illness that has no cure because it comes from loss that can’t be restored. It fills a void caused by loss. The hardest thing for me is to be with the sob. I subconsciously try to fill the void with busy stuff, other people’s stuff through my phone. That doesn’t work. The void caused by the loss of someone you love will not be filled with anything but love. The sob is just love bereaved mixed with anxiety for the loves in my life I haven’t lost yet. Grief mixed with anxiety that often gets shaken and stirred.

One of the few things I have found that relieves the sob is laughter. Not positivity, that is usually forced, and not laughter at the expense of others, but genuine humor. Humor is like a happy thought, a wink wink nudge nudge between you and the sob that comforts you and gives you the energy to go on. Sometimes it is just a very little thing mixed with the bittersweet.

I have two pictures of famous sculptures on my studio wall right by my desk: The Nike of Samothrace (Winged Victory), and Fallen Caryatid Carrying Her Stone by Rodin. Each sports a word bubble. The Nike says (naturally), “Just do it!” She has been on my wall a long time, but she needed some balance, or her humor feels abrasive. So, the caryatid joined her with the words, “The struggle is real.” It is very difficult to create art around humor and grief; it feels like riding a pendulum. It is difficult to finish a piece as you mentally swing back and forth between the two. But I think that is where I will be for the rest of my life. It isn’t the way I pictured my life for sure.