Quiet

I want it to be quiet.

I yearn for quiet. I want to sit in the cool, still sanctuary of my house and be quiet.

Life is not quiet. My life is not quiet. My life is full of the noise of a boisterous boy, a loving husband, a high-paced job, barking dogs, messes to be picked up, obligations to be met, viney weeds, laughter, friends, meals to be eaten, hugs, new people to meet, connections to explore, wine to be shared, plans to be made - all wonderful, alive, personal things. And that is the way I want my life to be.

But now I also need the quiet.

I process more slowly now, I think. And the noise becomes overwhelming too quickly. I need the quiet. I need the quiet to just feel. To write. To just process. To just breathe.

If the quiet must be broken, I want to be the one to break it. With crying. With screaming, if necessary. With the sound of breathing.

Two days ago, I met a friend for a drink. And it was perfect. We talked about babies and pregnancy (she's pregnant), we talked about Harper, we talked about work and houses and our noisy lives. There was no pain. It felt normal, it felt good, it felt like Before.

When it was over, I longed for the quiet to bask for a moment. Like the calm, quiet reveling stretch after a really good massage. But there was no quiet. There was getting on the metro and getting home and dinner and bedtime and finishing work and the stresses of daily existence.

And the feelings stayed inside, like a string coiled too tensely, and it makes me jittery and restless and sad. I feel more prone to nightmares and sleepless nights.

I miss the days of leave after Harper died when I could lose myself in the quiet. Even the hecticness of the tasks I was setting for myself to get through each day - exercise, organizing, cleaning, crying - felt quiet, like a bubble of white noise I had created for myself.

"Maybe you should take a day off," Lou suggested.

Maybe. But that just compresses time and the noise returns even louder. I think I need to learn to live in the noise again. To get to the point where it's not so jarring, so hard. Much of the time, it really isn't. It's fine. But then it builds up, and I need the quiet.

Today is the two month anniversary of Harper's death. Anniversaries are hard. So very hard. Intellectually, I know they're just a date on the calendar. Still, there's probably a reason every ancient society independently created their own time system. It is human nature to mark time. To record events.

Today is the two month anniversary, and I want to mourn. I need to mourn. And I want the quiet. I want to cry by myself.

I am beginning to have trouble co-existing in the same space as Harper's ashes. I am anxious to scatter them. To set them free. Lou is not there yet. He has his own time scale for processing, for moving towards action. I respect that. However, the presence of the ashes adds to the cacophony around me.

Everyone says I need to do what I need to do. Mourn on my own schedule. Feel what I am feeling. Grieve at my own pace.

Good advice, but totally out of keeping with reality.

You can't make the world stop because you're mourning. You can't tell it to be quiet, to shush it to a volume you can live with. You can't scream Stop talking, stop talking, stop talking!!!  to everyone around you. It doesn't work that way. Life goes on around you, no matter what the day.

And life, well, life is not quiet.

Anniversaries are hard. Really, really hard.