COME UNDONE — PART 1

“Who do you need?

Who do you love?

When you come undone”

DURAN, DURAN

TERM 1 — DROP OFF

I never understood what people meant when they said that grief comes in waves. I got the metaphor, but the feeling? — not so much. I get it now. In making the decision, and then dealing with the consequences, of sending my 13-year-old to boarding school halfway around the world, I experienced a very real and visceral form of grief. And I hate it. Vehemently.

The cycle of grief has 5 stages — it is not linear and doesn’t have a specific order — one person may go through all 5 stages and others 2 and some none at all. The laymen, like me, assumed otherwise. There are steps and you go through each one methodically until you reach the holy grail — acceptance. But to what end? An attempt to explain what exactly? Understand the feelings? De-construct the steps so that you can accurately identify which part of this cycle you are in at any given moment, even when what you really seem to be experiencing is your soul being ripped from your body?

For me — it started with denial. In the denial stage, you are not living in ‘actual reality,’ rather, you are living in a ‘preferable’ reality. Instead of becoming completely overwhelmed with grief, we deny it, do not accept it, and stagger its full impact on us at one time. The days whittled away one-by-one, the calendar melting away slowly seemed surreal. Though the date he was due to leave me, us, was etched firmly in my mind, the future still felt so far away, unreal — another dimension somehow. Even as I sat on a dining room table labelling every item he would need — it seemed like it was happening to someone else. The realization that I wasn’t going to wake him up every morning, lie in bed with him each evening as he talked about his day, laying 3 plates at the dining table where there used to be 4, watching in comfortable silence a Netflix special, hearing his loud voice boom over a gaming microphone, watching him play a sport at school, helping him study for exams, feeling his hugs, seeing him play with his dogs, hearing his voice daily, telling him it’s time to shower, ordering take out for him, seeing his eyes light up with laughter, helping him organize his desk, shopping for clothes and shoes, holding him in emotional safety when he is hurting, crying with him — all these daily, ordinary little things; that make me a mom. Similarly, when he was in utereo — his nourishment of all the things he needed, came from me — his mama.

They cut the cord at birth and yet this moment, this separation as he left the safety of our home, of me, this felt like the true severing of that cord. The physical ripping of him, my child, from the security of our connection, the real cutting of our ties and all the things that made me a mama.

Up until that actual drop-off date, January 2021, my mind drifted through this haziness of illusion. Denial. I was absolutely submerged in it. The flight, the two-hour drive to the Midlands, checking into the bed & breakfast — all felt surreal. I awoke at 5:30am silently bawling my eyes out. Starring at his face so I could etch every part of it in my memory, in my heart. I cry as I hugged his sleeping body, conscious that soon I would have to wake him so that we could begin this dreadful day. I breathe him in as I gently wake him hoping that my senses can devour all that he is. I am consumed by doubt -is this truly the right choice for him? For us? He wakes to my mournful face and in truth he was excited, not in some discernable way, but his eyes, they had hope. As we drove the 6 minutes it took to reach his school, my body was heavy, my heart in pain and I kept thinking that I had to keep my shit together — for him.

We set up his bed in a 5-bedroom shared room and it kept my mind off the fact that I was actually leaving him here. Trying to create the tiny crammed space into something that would resemble some comforts of home and deluding myself to believe that the cocoon I was creating would be enough to make him feel protected and nurtured. The thought ruminating over and over in my mind “Am I doing the right thing for him?” For me. For us as a family. Why? Why is this the right decision? Is it right? The other thoughts — have I taught him enough? He struggled to open a coke can at lunch, who will help him? Were the random strangers now charged with presiding over his well-being equipped to do that? Equipped how? Some professional certification in education? Would that make them capable of understanding him, his needs, of keeping his soul safe? Who will love him through his hardships? That’s my job and always has been. Have I just outsourced my parenting?

I cry the whole day. He stays steady. Like he needs to hold me up. I tell him this would be easier if he was a shitty kid. He isn’t. The fact that I don’t get to be a witness to this next chapter in his journey is killing me. The actual goodbye comes hours later and yet to me it feels like minutes. We perch on the boot of the car, away from any prying eyes, lest my breakdown causes some sort of teasing to start. I tell him that I believe in him, his deep kindness will carry him through, and that he has an army of family that support him. He walks away, head held high and doesn’t turn around again.

I drive away through blurred vision and scream at the injustice of my own making. The cord has been severed, roughly and painfully. I board my first flight and realise that I am leaving him here — there is no plausible deniability to get me through that. Telling me that loads of people have been through this doesn’t lessen my suffering. I don’t need to feel like I belong to some exclusive club of parents that have made similar choices. It’s a shit club and I want no part of it. Dropping into a comparing mindset, comparing myself to parents in a similar situation does nothing to assuage my fear, my guilt, my choices. I cry for what feels like hours and try to dig deep into my reserves to cry not in sorrow, but in gratitude, for all the people who have showed up for me in this moment, this situation. Strangers who reached out and offered support for me and for him, friends who have called multiple times and some that have taken on the roll as his guardian and stood in as his in-locum parents. It was a kindness beyond anything I could have ever imagined or hoped for.

These people that I know with every breathe inside me would do absolutely anything for him — for us. It helps temporarily. The wave subsides. Much like the natural cycle of the ocean, though, it comes back. High tide this time; no gentle waves lapping at the shore. Huge, angry, aggressive ones. I am on my next flight, leaving the country. Flying over the same goddamn ocean that now separates me from him. A tsunami of anger boils over. I am well into the next cycle of grief, gratitude be dammed. I am untethered, I have come undone.

Screw the “letting go” rhetoric. I am pissed off at myself now. Did I teach him to change a duvet cover properly? What will he be feeling when he goes to bed that first night away from me? Will he be afraid? Will the mantras I have taught him as a refuge from negative thoughts and feelings work, will they hold him in safety at all? What expression will his face make when he answers a question correctly in maths? What does his room smell like? My shoulders are permanently attached to my ears and I am not far from achieving hunch-back status. My stomach and solar plexus are a jumble of nerves. When he wakes up in an unfamiliar room with strangers, will he be able to even identify what that feels like?

They have rules, this school. No contact for the first two weeks. To help the kids settle in without being dragged back into missing home or family. But it’s bullshit. I don’t care that this school has been around for 125 years and has produced amazing men. Why should he trust mere strangers? We raised him not to even talk to strangers and yet now have thrown him in with 600 of them and told him to embrace it. This feels counter-intuitive to me. It took him 13 years to trust me for fucks sake and he came out of my vagina! Now I expected him to push so far past his comfort zone so as to trust people who have no blood ties to him? To trust that they will have his back? The world is cruel place — its’ hard and cynically I believe that no one can raise him better than me. I feel suddenly obsolete. Does mothering end here? Do you stop being a mother when your child dies? That’s what this feels like. Death. Dark. An ending.

***

I go through the anger stage of the grief cycle pretty quickly and the bargaining has kicked in. I don’t think I have spoken to the universe this much in my 44 years. This last month has felt like an on-going conversation with the divine, a negotiation, and a plea to help him; to help him, to help us. No one taught me the skill set to let my kid go. I am treading water, trying to keep my head above the surface, to retain some level of strength — for him. Perhaps also for me? Yet every cell in my body is screaming at me to just “bring him home”.

The first call; I keep my voice on an even keel. It is as much his lifeline as it is mine. His voice, mellowed, trying not to say too much for fear of being overheard, trying to put on some stupid brave face that will do nothing for his character. Years of me instilling that vulnerability is courage (thank you Brene Brown) seems to have disappeared. In its place, the messaging of the patriarchy that strength and courage looks like “boys don’t’ cry” and “boys shouldn’t show emotion” seems to have taken over. I replay the conversation over and over in my mind as we hang up, looking for nuances that I might have missed that would give me some comfort that he is actually ok.

Day 2. The call that I was not expecting comes. The hard cries, the sobbing. My heart breaks wide open. He is now in deep sadness and fear. Sadness at being so far away from us, fear of a strong hierarchy system that is somewhat institutionalized in the school. Male energy at its worst, as older boys try to exert their power.

I myself drop straight back into anger in response. Not at him, but at the world, at this situation, at myself. They don’t lie when they tell you that this is a cycle; you don’t move up the steps towards the next feeling, you shift across them all. I think that’s what they mean about the waves. The word “step” suggests movement upward — towards something. It reminds me of this quote by Jonatan Martensson “Feelings are much like waves: we can’t stop them from coming, but we can choose which one to surf.” I, of course choose to ride it and am enveloped in so many thoughts: Where are the people that promised to look out for him? Do they even know? They are supposed to know, aren’t they? Isn’t that their job? Sworn into a code of silence by the other boys, my son, ever the rule follower, doesn’t say a word about what the problem really is what — what is really happening. Is this a mothering failure again? Once again, I am in bargaining. Asking the universe to allow me the evil thoughts so that I don’t somehow fuck up my karmic balance by just feeling what I am feeling. I hate this patriarchy. I hate the older boys for not being raised better. I hate the adults in the school that seem blinded somehow by what’s happening under their noses. I hate myself for making this choice. Now am back to the grief stage of anger. I am determined not to get swallowed by this anger. My sobriety is being tested. Numbing in a glass of wine would make it so much easier.

I am writing this piece as I sit by the Indian ocean. It occurs to me that this is the same ocean that has separated me from my son and the irony is not lost on me. In the past, this ocean has brought me so much calm, now I loathe it. It looked dangerous, daunting and dark. The mysteries no longer holding any charm — just fear.

Day 3. The next call. I could barely hear him over his resounding laughter. Bouncing and echoing off the walls. Relief washes over me. He had found a friend that made him laugh. It was infectious, his laughter, it made me laugh. Tears once again streaming, tears of gratitude in the knowledge that the universe had my back. I had asked for signs, real concrete, tangible, visible signs, that the choice I had made sending him this school was the right one. It did. The wave didn’t last long, though. They never do.

The next day. His voice morose once again. His need to just come home; his anger that his parents just didn’t get it, that we didn’t understand. The silent accusations that he didn’t feel heard or seen, by us. The newness of everything. A new country, a new culture, a new way of living, new teachers, new friends, new environments, new food, new mattresses, new sheets, new routines, new uniforms. I am overwhelmed just writing about it; isn’t it just too much for a 13-year-old boy to cope with? Will this truly be the making of him or the absolute breaking of him? Is it a risk I am willing to even take?

Welcome my old friend. Depression. It’s been a while since we met. Another stage of the grief cycle rears itself. This time it feels different. The energy of it doesn’t feel as permanent. I have other equally destructive emotions that I can lean into. God, I could use a drink. I have the option as an adult to escape into the depths of a bottle; but what does my son have? He has to feel it all, alone. That kills me. The thought that all these big feelings that are drowning me are the same ones he needs to grapple with and overcome. Have I given him the right tools? Do I even have them myself? Will I ever get to acceptance? Acceptance that the choice we made was the right one, acceptance that there will be good days and bad. Acceptance that at the end of this chapter in his journey will be worth it. Will acceptance last or, like all the other temporary waves of overwhelming emotion that have been tossing me around, just wash away? What does it take to trust this decision? This process? What parts of my baby will get compromised as he tries to stay in this school? I am also done with the time continuum story — the idea that it takes time to settle, to adjust. What inside you gets broken, scarred and shattered whilst you wait for time to catch up?

Will he have regrets if I just bring him home? Will I? Will he feel cheated out of the opportunity later in life when he reflects back on the decisions and choices that make up his life? How do I trust time? We are all holding on so tightly to the belief that if we give it enough time — we will all get acceptance. That’s essentially what is mooring all of us. Time — and what am I missing of his life as time — takes it time!

The lyrics of this song permeating through every cell and I think to myself, “who does he need, who does he love when he comes undone”…