Thinking

Something weird happened to me this year about Jacob's death anniversary, and it's really been bothering me.

I didn't read the poems this year.

Normally, I read them at least once a year, either on his birthday or his death day.  This year, I started to, and all of a sudden, 3 or 4 poems into it, I became critical of ... grammar, punctuation, sentence structure.

Normally, I'm happy to read them, because it brings me back to having him again.  They were written straight from the heart, with very few edits or proofing.  Straight from the gut, actually.

One thing about this year is that there's no lilacs here in San Francisco.  So I don't get that reminder seeping slowly into my brain, the pre-warning that his birthday is coming up.  So the dates couldn't sneak up on me.  Lilacs were blooming when he was born, and smelling them is forever etched into my brain.  Every time I left the hospital, I could smell them.  .

Reading the poems puts me RIGHT back there, in a happy way for the most part.  Squirming in shame about his first month, but forgiving myself too.  It's weird to think of my ex mother-in-law reading them.  There was so much judgement going on during that time, from both sides of the family, so to remember Jacob is to remember those things too. 

I was in hell back then, but every night, rocking him in front of the fish tank would bring us out of it - till morning.

From the moment I saw him, there was a white light around him, and this was before I knew anything about auras.  I never mentioned it to anyone because it partly scared me, and partly didn't want to be thought even more crazy.  Looking back at it now, I wonder if it scared me because I knew he wasn't going to stay mine? 

But why I couldn't read the poems the other day?  No clue.  Feel free to weigh in with your comments - maybe it's obvious to someone else.  :-)


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