Once You Know Shit Happens...

Day 857.

Awoken in the night with an anxious start after 3 hours of sleep. An anxious start was familiar in my nights, prior to Luke’s death.

I have forgotten to take some medicine.
There’s a course of something I’m supposed to be taking. 
I’m supposed to take it all. 
I’m supposed to complete the course, but I don’t know either in my dream or upon waking what it is. 

And so, I’m here writing, outside, cigarette in hand, with the sound of the gutters dripping from the earlier rain. My heart is pounding and there’s no peace to be found.

Yesterday had many emotional events. The ramifications of which, have yet to unfold.

Adam crashed his car. He totally stuffed it.

He hydroplaned on the floods of Laurel Canyon and straight into a high voltage power pole, a pole of wood that fractured.

George was following in his car that was once Luke’s. 
George witnessed the entire event. 
He pulled over and ran to the crash site, believing Adam to be dead. 
He was not and apart from shock and impact from airbags and the shunt, he was unharmed. 
But for a few minutes, George thought his Dad was dead.

Again, George was put in the position of calling me. 
Again, he was put in a position of shock.

So here we are, back in disarray.

George has been suffering the unfolding of the loss of his brother.

Classically and as predicted by my therapist, he’s falling apart just as I regain strength, now that there is room for him to do so, with his mother partially restored.

He suffers panic attacks and sleeplessness, and now on top of that, he witnessed what he thought would certainly be the end of his father and once more it would be left to him to tell me.

And so how do I respond to my child in such a position?
Suffering, as I witness my lovely boy in his struggles.
Adam is weakened, stiff, and still in shock. 
It’s a shit show.

I went to bed exhausted and early for me (before 11) and now I awoke anxious. 
You bet I’m anxious.

Myriad what-ifs are running wild, but thank God it was not a fatal crash. 
Thank God it was not George. 
Thank God it was not Luke’s car that got totaled.

Is this just bad luck?
Is this actually good luck?
....Oh hello! Chinese farmer fable.

How differently would we see this if we had not already lost one of our numbers? 
Luke’s death colors everything.

How differently we see our world in the knowledge and experience of loss.

George had to momentarily stare at the loss of his dad, at the prospect of calling me to tell me at the loss of another of us.

The prospect makes me scared to invest in love once more. 
I had been uneasy in the days preceding this event. 
I had been anxious something was going to happen.

I was uneasy when George was out driving. 
I had imagined the VW symbol in a tree trunk. I had imagined something awful happening to George.

But it was not that VW... it was not the wood of a tree, but a post... and it was not George. 
This ability terrifies me. 
Is it an ability of foresight? or just that I now live fearing the worst? 
Because to me, the worst became a reality.
Constantly in fear of losing George or Adam, or ...

Once you know this level of grief, truly know it, rather than just dread or imagine it, it is terrifying.

How does a family ever have anything that resembles normal emotion once you have experienced what we live with now?

Does this grief distract us so that we make mistakes when driving?
Does this grief cause our hearts to malfunction so that we actually struggle to oxygenate our brains and organs and so we fuck up?

It feels right now that my family is under attack and we will be indeed lucky to survive.

Does this tiny part of the Scott family have an expiration date?

Well, so there it is.
The words that are unspeakable.

No wonder I cannot sleep.
No wonder I stay up so late I must exhaust myself so that I am too tired to be awoken by my thoughts.

857 days after Luke’s death, I’m still in Hell.