Diagnosis Days.
It was the grocery shopping that broke me during the diagnosis days. Staring down an aisle of salad dressing as my world came crumbling around me, I resented the mundane. I felt an anger, an ache, a jealousy rise inside of me as I watched rows of strangers grab a 6-pack for the party or toss another box of cereal behind the toddler that rode in front.
The cashier smiled into my eyes as she asked how my day was. Could she tell? "Fine." Except my son has cancer. The mundane took everything out of me.
I longed for those strangers to look me in the eye and see my pain. I wanted to know that I wasn't swallowed alone in this convenience store set to meet our bodily needs. No, there is an ache that no number of green smoothes can fix.
As I walked through the dark parking lot, my mind snapped as I began to mentally write the eulogy for the boy I had loved for 7 years. It was the first of the morbid thoughts to enter my mind. I was getting ahead of myself, but somewhere deep inside I feared that it was an idea that I needed to get used to.
My counselor labeled this an intrusive thought. Like when you're driving down the highway and panic that oncoming traffic is headed right for you, despite everyone staying safely in their lanes. The body tenses up just the same. I think I lived in that state as each of my one-year-old children learned to climb up and down the stairs. I would hold my breath and wince in anticipation of a missed step that never came.
Throughout the year, I started to meet some of the strangers. Sisters and cancer-warrior mamas, who went on their own mind numbing grocery trips hiding behind blank stares and masks, making the next right choice to help heal their child. Pressing in, dozens of people are walking around in a cloud of depression, of fear their marriage is ending, in an ache that their job is on the line, a friendship is irreparable, a parent is too sick. I wasn't swallowed alone after all. I learned that grief recognizes grief and it does not discriminate. So many of us have had our own mind-snapping moments. We've held our breath wondering if we are one step away from tumbling to the ground.
We are not strangers after all.