Autumn is All Around

Autumn is here in all its glory. The air is crisp. The foliage is changing. Chestnuts litter the ground. It is splendid and it hurts so bad.

Fall is A’s season. We were delighted to have a due date in October because both E and I claim autumn as our favorite season. It is a beautiful time of year to be born.

Each day I awake and am bombarded with fall. It surrounds me – the cool air as I climb out of bed, the view from the windows. This makes it impossible to focus on anything else. My mind keeps jumping back to this time last year. Our excitement and anticipation were building. The final preparations were being ticked off the list. I wished desperately that baby would stay put until after the Happiest Baby on the Block class, which was scheduled for 3 days after the due date. Foolish me didn’t realize it was while sitting in that stupid class that I would feel my son moving for the last time.

The me standing on this side looking back at pre-calamity me cannot believe my naivety. I shake my head in disbelief and pity. Worried about attending a parenting class? Terrified of having an unplanned c-section? Concerned about managing the forthcoming onslaught of visitors to our house to meet our firstborn? Anxious that if baby was born too close to Halloween would it mar the child’s sense of identity by condemning it costume-themed birthday parties for the rest of it’s childhood? How effing shallow. How insignificant. How utterly naïve.

And so, like a film reel, these last blissful, ignorant weeks replay in my head. Naturally, I cannot pause the screen when the happiness is shattered. Next come the scenes of devastation and the fallout. Over and over I relive the events of last October in my mind. It is effing torture. But I cannot help it. Autumn surrounds me. It is his season. Each vibrant tree I pass stabs at my heart.

The panic I felt with A’s approaching first birthday has dissipated. Now I can sense a slow tightening around me neck, a gradual suffocating sensation. After several decent weeks of togetherness and functionality the heavy transparent net of languidness and depression is settling down on top of me. I do not want to do anything – not fun stuff, not even eat ice cream. I just want to curl up and wait out the day. From my tenure here in Griefland I know it is futile to fight such against such a force. So I am giving myself over to the lethargy and apathy. Trying not to judge how I feel but accept that it with time it will pass and the heaviness will lighten once again.