It
is sometime past three in the morning, I can’t sleep…
When
you’re a child who has lost your parent to death, you are an orphan. When
you’re married and you lose your spouse you’re a widow(er). But when you’re a
parent and you lose your child, there is no word for that…there is no term,
nothing to call it but unnatural. Tragic. Painful. Heartbreaking. For the last
fourteen years, fourteen years ago today, the 16th of April, I have
been wrestling with this concept but I never win. I always come up crying and
never find the right word to describe it…a parent who has lost a child is
simply indescribable. Even after all this time, these many months and years, I
still have this unbearable hole in my heart, this deep scar on my soul and I
know it will never go away. It’s said, “It gets better with time, time heals
all wounds…” but that’s a crock of shit. It doesn’t really get easier with time,
only more expected and tolerable…every year, twice a year it hurts worse than
you can imagine. I know she’ll always be with me in my heart, but fuck that,
I’d rather have her next to me. It’s selfish, I know and it’s up to me to “let
it go” but I won’t, I’ll never let it go, I’ll never forget 4/16/01; after this
pain, there is very little in life that frightens me, there is nothing which
can be to me that’s worse than what’s already been done. Except, the fear of
losing my any of my other three children, there is not a single fear left, not
even the deaths of my parents, my brother, my wife…myself…none of that
frightens me at all…why, should it?
I’m
trying to remember good things, thinking about happy times, I try to imagine
the night we were sitting together as a family, painting arts and crafts…Valerie
was sitting between Cassidy and Julian, I was sitting across from them while
Kelly buzzed around the table helping all of us; I still can remember The
Beatles “Sgt. Pepper” playing in the background and the aroma of cranberry
candles. I try to remember when I let her drive the car and how giddy (but
good) she was at doing that, I remember how she didn’t want to see “The Phantom
Menace”, the Star Wars film that came out in 1999, but once she did, she
demanded to do a video marathon watching the original three movies; but then I
get sad, she never saw the next 2 films, nor the next three...I cry. I try to
think about the love we shared and not focus on the pain of losing her. I have,
in the past, tried to erase the pain by sinking myself into my work. That
doesn’t work well. The sadness comes out sideways and I don’t really get away
from all those feelings. They always catch up with me like a tsunami crashing
on the beaches of my soul; welling up fifty feet high and then smashing into my
life, nearly drowning me. This year, although I’m not trying to bury the pain,
I’m just hurting badly.
I
always hurt badly.
I
have punished myself this week already by doing the promotional engagements
that I did, I didn’t really have to do them and I only sold three books over
two days. Tuesday went alright, I felt a connection with my audience and I felt
like I made a difference. But yesterday, Wednesday, was hell. I was a prickly
mood to start with, I had not slept well but when my presentation was cut
short, I got miffed. I didn’t stick around for the luncheon, I just got on my
bike and rode almost 50 miles home. It took me almost five hours, being old and
in the way didn’t help anything so when I arrived just before dinner, I was in
no mood to cook. But my family loves me, they took care of me and I was feeling
better when I went to bed early, just past 21:30, I took a Klonopin and fell
asleep quickly.
Now
I am up, awake from another terrifying dream, another staggering, breath-taking
wicked dream where my deceased daughter, her flesh like a Zombie, peeling from
her face is warning me about the demons that are coming to take away all of my
children and they almost have Cassidy, they have him and they’re going to kill
him too, just like they did to her! I run and run, inside of the dream and run
into Vince Vaughn in a misty blue and green colored room, he’s surround by
others, but I can’t see their faces. Vaughn looks like a gangster, but he knows
me because we both hung around Lake Forest 20 years ago, so he was my friend
and he said something about how I need to stay out of sight. The henchmen he
was with just stood in the shadows and I started to tell Vince about my
daughter and the demons when, in that strange way dreams are, I was suddenly
alone in a deep canyon. I looked up, the narrow walls were eighty feet high, I
could barely see the sky. There was a stream trickling at my feet so I got on
my hands and knees and started to crawl…the stream got bigger, wider and deeper
and before too long I was floating inside the stream and being carried away
swiftly. For a moment it felt nice but then, when the waters started running
faster and I felt the current turning, I saw Cassidy on the riverbank and I
started to try swimming towards him. By now the stream was a rapids of rivers
and I was tossed against rocks, splashed until I was blind and eventually find
myself beached on the banks of a murky tide-pool.
Then
I woke up. I walked around the old farmhouse, I strolled in the night under the
fading moon and then tried to go back asleep again. I was tossed and turned, I
flipped on the tele and streamed an old movie from Netflix. But when that was
over and I was still unable to sleep, I started to write this…I thought about
sharing it with you, this crazy insanity I feel inside my head my head as it’s
happening because sometimes, my fellow babies, this whacked out disorder will
clobber you blue without the slightest provocation; this week, I have a trigger
the size of a nuke, it’s scaring the fuck out of me right now too…take a deep
breath, d’Philip…close your eyes and find the center…listen for your heart…let
the music play.
The
scary thing about what Valerie said to me sort of fits into this strange
feeling I’ve since we went on this cruise to The Caribbean in the summer of
2000…we stopped in Haiti and while there we witness this sacred voodoo ceremony
and dance performance. I took a couple of snap shots of this event and right
after I did, this creep, old woman with war paint and bad teeth got in my face
and said something tribal. I got shivers, I didn’t understand what she said but
I felt this cold, shiver in my spine and for the rest of the performance I
retired to the back of the ship. When we returned home and had the photos
process, all the shots of the VooDoo ritual dance were a murky brown and you
couldn’t see anything very clearly…except, in one shot, in the middle of the
murky brown chemical burn, I could see the eyes of the freaky old lady who
freaked me out…that tripped me out and I tried to write about it, only to find
the reality of what happening in my life was far worse than the tragic events
my characters were suffering.
In
the year after we returned from that cruise my whole life unraveled…My
relationship with Valier got very hostile because her mother was trying to use
Valerie to pump money from me and I refused to deal with Valerie’s mother; I
told Valerie she can call me when she’s not with her mother and she called me a
fucking asshole and hung up on me. That was the last thing we said to one
another. In September, Maggie was born without complications, however there was
a concern for her hip placements; November the land development company I
worked for announced it was pulling out of Arkansas and relocating to Missouri.
I was offered a lateral move with the company, but it was a very rural place
and so we declined and I got a meager compensation package. Christmas was
supposed to be a big family reunion…my brother, his wife and their new baby
were coming from Chicago…Cassidy and Valerie would be arriving in Arkansas on Christmas
Day and we planned a grand celebration…However a freak ice storm took the
entire south and Midwest! Valerie and Cassidy never made it to Arkansas, their
flights were cancelled. We got several feet of ice and ended up being trapped
in our house until New Year’s Eve with no power, no heat and when 2001, chimed
in at midnight, I knew it was going to be a really weird year.
Why
I am writing this now? I already fucking wrote about this in the book! FUCK!
It’s the re-living thing, it’s PTSD
trait, I have these vivid flashbacks and the best way for me to cope with them,
sometimes it to describe them…sometimes I draw or paint them…I’ve even tried to
write music for these feelings…but there’s also a paranoid thing too, like…okay
this is COMPLETELY CRAZY…what if in the dream that’s keeping me up tonight,
Valerie’s warning about demons is real? What if there ARE DEMONS going after my
children…? Could that be why there were no culprits caught in her murder? They
gave her poison, they did very bad things to her and then they left her alone
in a condo, nobody knew her and worse, nobody knew who these scumbag, these
killers, these evil demons were…now Cass, he’s been known to get taken in by
“the wrong people” very easily, he’s gotten into serious trouble with the law
because of fights and violent behavior…he’s been whacked on drugs for a
while…although he says he’s been clean for seven months, not even a drop of
booze…I don’t believe him because, well, I know what a liar sounds like,
especially when it’s my own son lying to me…those demons work in mysterious
ways, they slip in and out like a knife from the shadows…what if these demons
are haunting my son now? I worry about this like it’s real, it was a fucking
dream and I’m worried and working myself up because it like it’s actual…SHIT!
I’m
going to try to go back to bed…
FOUR
HOURS LATER…
I
have things to do today to distract me some…my schedule is clear for today and
tomorrow, I wanted to allow myself time for grief because it’s important to me
to let it flow…roll away the tears, sail the waves of highs and lows until,
again, the sea inside my soul is again still, peaceful, at rest. I don’t know
what else much I could be doing to help myself get through this pain. I don’t
want to just keep writing about it; it’s like picking at the wound. I just miss
her so much, I miss everything about her…music, I’m going to listen to and play
some music…I miss having friends locally, but I’m very Grateful for the friends
I have here…Like I mentioned, I don’t want to dwell on the loss of my daughter
because it’s such a powerful matter I can’t get completely around it; the best
method is to keep busy, focus on the life around me and know that this pain
will subside with time. It never goes away, but it subsides.
I
feel guilty for feeling so sad right now. There are so many other parents who
have also lost their children unexpectedly, some parents having lost more than
one child. Who am I to dwell on this issue so much, how can afford the luxury
of pining for the death of a child 14 years ago? I feel shame, I feel weak and
lost. I should have been over this by now, I think to myself, it wasn’t this
hard last year or the year before; I was getting control of this wicked,
slippery pain. Not this year, for some reason I’m really tender about it and
feel consumed with this agony, I have been feeling all week and in the last 24
hours it’s become almost unbearable. I am writing this as my cheeks stain with
falling tributaries of tears, nobody else is home, I’m alone with the pets and
my pain. I just want to crawl back to bed, hide under the blanket and play dead
myself. But I know, that’s not going to make anything better, it might just
make it worse. I feel like talking about her, about telling her story, telling
the story of her and I and how we never had the chance to be a part of each
other’s life, but I did that already…in “My BiPolar Reality; How Life Goes On…”
my issues with my Valerie weave through my life like an invisible thread which
eventually unravels my life. I wish I could talk with somebody who knew her,
but the only person who knew her as well as me is my mother and she’s 79 years
old, in poor health and I don’t want to burden my mother with my whiney little
bitch act. My wife knew Valerie, a little…they became close in the two years
that Valerie was a part of our lives but its painful for her too and my wife,
she loves me so well, she would simply cradle me, stroke my hair and coo while
I fall asleep. Maybe another intense bike ride would do me good, but my thighs
hurt so badly I could hardly do my morning stroll around the block and I
skipped my exercise routine today. Physical pain does not lessen the emotional
pain, it just distracts me from it for a while until, later, both my head and
body hurt…I don’t feel creative, I don’t feel happy, I don’t feel like doing
shit…not even house chores or vegging out on the tele…I just feel like a
useless clump of fleshy shit!
Excuse
me, but I just have to stop writing here and now, it hurts too much.
I
miss you Valerie Anne Chalmers…I love you.
.jpg) |
| Valerie with my mother and I, February of 1985... |
