So?

I'm stuck at the moment, some time around 11 o'clock at night 5th of June last year when I opened the door to the police to be told that my son was having a CT scan, that he was alive, they didn't know how badly injured he was, but I can get in the car NOW and go to the hospital.

Phoning my husband who was searching...
Waiting...
Then the blue light, the siren
Us huddled together in the back of the car, me dreading what I would have to accept.

So many, many bleak moments to follow.

Opening the door is the sticky moment, the hot moment, I feel my blood draining away and a mixture of wanting to run, but also a need to curl up in to a tight ball and vanish. In my memory there is nothing I did right that night. My memory is sound-tracked by my daughter's anger because I didn't want to report Josh as a missing person...

I didn't want to make it real.

He was terrified of the police...

The six weeks of the summer holiday this year have been hard, worse, like sitting in the back of the police car, a journey through blackness to an uncertain destination. We made that first journey together in the car. This time I travel alone.

And this afternoon, a year and 3 months on, the memory of opening the door wont go away. The feeling is of being bereft.

This is worse than anything I've encountered so far.
Worse than doing my assignments whilst Josh keeps talking at me.
Worse than waiting to be attacked.

The separateness makes me feel an icy, bleak isolation, a sense of being punished, and I'm powerless to change anything.

These are the feelings that float to the surface. I guess this is why the police car returns, it's like one of Josh's phases, when he would keep saying over and over "I want to go back, I've got to go back" I understand it in me as a desperate need to reset the clock, go back and tell myself it will be OK..

Memory is selective and trauma hijacks the system. When it runs it changes the colours and textures, hiding the positive, confirming the tragic, it shines a spotlight on the worst aspects to create water-tight arguments for despair. The key to getting out is to hear the negative feelings, to give them space enough to name them. Then to return with memories that confound the negative images and statements.

The sense of isolation comes from the fact that my husband wont process what happened with me. I need him for me, but he doesn't need me. I need to talk about it, feel that he is with me again. He wants to 'drop it''.

Yeah, you've got it, this is why I write.

He does blame and shame, I'm in grief.

And in my mind I hear him say 'So?'