"But You Look Good, Rachel..."

I haven't written a post in over 15 months.  I spent 11 months getting through all of the firsts without John - the first time my birthday came up (a week and a half after he died), my first trip (it felt very weird not to call him at the end of each day), his first birthday after his death (I still ate red velvet cake), starting the school year without him, giving out Halloween candy by myself, having 5 chairs instead of 6 at the Thanksgiving table, Christmas without perfume from John (though my sister offered to buy some for me - no worries, I'm still rotating bottles each day), spending New Year's Eve at home alone without John...  you get the idea.  All that time we were also watching Mom get sicker and sicker.  I hit a point late in the summer of 2018 that I felt like I told anyone who would listen (and that meant Karen and Rebecca heard it repeatedly) that I had a feeling she'd die a year after John.  

It was 11 months.

So many things were the same and yet so many things were different.  But there I was, getting ready to hit the one year mark from losing John, and suddenly I was mourning my mother.  

Yeah.  That went well.  

Just as I had the year before I took off a week and then jumped right back into teaching.  Our first anniversary without John - what would have been our 10th anniversary - I spent the evening working at our school's annual arts festival.  I remember standing off stage with tears streaming down my cheeks while my dancers performed, then wiping away the tears, slapping on a smile, and stepping up to the mic to introduce my next group.  The one year mark for his passing?  I spent it with two lifelong friends who took me to Asheville (one of my favorite places) for the weekend.  Regardless, I stopped dealing with his death and just kept busy so I wouldn't have to think about it.  And I never dealt with Mom's death, because I'm still mourning losing John.  Instead I spent my summer traveling as much as possible.  If I got offered a gig through my second job I took it.  Go to Oklahoma for a week?  Sure!  Come back and leave the next day to spend a week in South Carolina?  Why not?  Go to Orlando?  You got it!  Drive to Tennessee to spend a day presenting at an elementary school and then drive back?  Challenge accepted!  Because guess what?  If I wasn't home - if I was flying or driving or presenting or doing anything other than my norm - I wasn't thinking about how normal didn't exist anymore.  

Here's the kicker.  Doing all of that traveling meant that I kept interacting with people who knew me from various times over my last 8 years.  Some knew me well.  Some barely recognized me.  But almost everyone would ask my favorite question - "How are you doing?" - and no matter how I answered ("I cried myself to sleep last night", "I'm doing good", "I'm terribly lonely", "I think I'm depressed and I need a therapist") they would reply with the same answer, "But you look good, Rachel."

Ughhhhhh.

How can I look good?  What does that even mean?  Sometimes it's all I can do to convince myself to get up and take a shower (if it's Saturday there's a good chance I haven't, I'm still in my pajamas, and I won't leave the house all day).  By mid-fall I had a handful of friends who knew about this response and would watch for it as I ran into people I knew.  It became our inside joke.  One in particular would stand behind the person so she could wink at me when they said those words - But you look good, Rachel.  

The irony?  My mother was always hyper-focused on my appearance.  During my teen years she'd walk down the hall and turn to look at me as I finished getting ready for church on Sunday.  "Make sure you fix the back of your hair," was one of her favorite comments.  "Don't forget to put on lipstick," was another.  And please know that even though I spent 3 hours sweating at the dance studio on Saturday I always took a shower first and went with a full face of makeup.  Appearance was very important to Mom, and so the irony wasn't lost on me.  Every time someone said, "But you look good, Rachel," it felt like a slap across the face ("who do I have to look good for?  John is gone") and then a backhand ("and Mom's the one who would have cared").  

And by the way, telling someone who feels either numb or stormy on the inside that they look good on the outside?  It just confuses them, causes more turmoil, makes them feel unseen.  

So after almost a full year of firsts without John, I entered into a year of firsts with Mom.  Yeah.  

Then Covid-19 happened.  And life as we knew it came to a screeching halt.  3 weeks ago we shut down our schools.  A week ago the state issued a stay-at-home order.  And I was (virtually) looking at so many people around me who were freaking out.  They couldn't get to certain members of their families.  They were stuck with other members of their families.  They couldn't go out on dates.  They couldn't go to concerts, or Disney World, or on their spring break trips.  You name it, if it was normal before it wasn't happening now.  And I watched friends FLIP OUT.  I listened to teachers talk about how devastating it was (that was their word, multiple friends used it, DEVASTATING) that schools were closing.  I heard people talking about how distraught they were about the impact this would have on their kids.  People complained about cancelled vacations and closed stores and restaurants.  

And that's when I realized just how numb I'd become to the world around me.  Because guess what?  This new normal?  It doesn't feel devastating to me.  The past four and a half years were devastating.  This "new normal" isn't new - things feeling out of whack has become my normal.  Feeling disheveled?  Definitely my norm.  I keep thinking I've gone through all of John's stuff, but then I start finding new things (last week it was tape measures - I found at least 5 tape measures, none of which I knew we had, in 24 hours).  For almost two years I have not once dreamed about John, something that I thought was odd.  (In case you're wondering, for several months I dreamed about Mom all the time, but would reach a point in the dream when I would look at her and say, "but you're not here anymore" and she'd reply, "you're right" and vanish.)  But today?  Today I take a nap and dream about John, dream that I'm cheating on him in his last days.  THAT was disturbing.  But what I've realized is that my brain is very much aware that these next 3 days are leading up to the 2 year mark, and with nothing and no one to distract me as I sit in my home I'm finally full out mourning.  

Because I can't hide from it anymore.  John's gone and he's not coming back.  My world is forever changed.