Eet, Eat, Eet

The book I'm reading right now is by a father who lost his nineteen year old son. When he speaks of his grief, he speaks of "sneak attacks." A sneak attack is when something or someone reminds you again of your loss and it feels like an attack. The sorrow washes over you and the tears begin anew. You thought you had it together for a minute, or an hour, or half of a day, and then a sneak attack appears out of nowhere. It finds you when you are defenseless and takes you completely off guard. It is not pleasant. I want to run away and hide in order to protect myself from another emotional onslaught, from feeling that loss over and over again, but, I cannot. In a way I guess I have come to accept that these attacks will continue forever, perhaps how I react to them will change with time. But, right now, they are painful, because they remind me of everything I have lost with the death of my beautiful and wonderful son. When these attacks happen I feel so overwhelmed with sadness and shock that I am going through another episode of this emotional turmoil. I don't know that I will ever get used to them.

The other day in a waiting room, I picked up a copy of "Baltimore" magazine. On the cover was a big heaping stack of blueberry pancakes. I am a breakfast person and those pancakes looked so good. The article was about some of the top places in Baltimore to get a good breakfast. Those pancakes turned out to be from Miss Shirley's, a restaurant that Nick had told me about and cajoled me into going there for breakfast. Of course, I loved it and we had a great time. Nick and I had been planning to go back to Miss Shirley's as soon as he was better. We had a big celebration planned that would include family and friends. Now that stack of pancakes just reminds me of all the places Nick and I will never go to together ever again.

There were other places listed in the article that I know Nick would love to visit and chow down. The whole issue of food in general makes me sad and want to cry. The whole time Nick was sick he did nothing but lose weight. We all tried so hard to make sure he got the proper nutrition and he loved to eat for the most part. But, his illness fought against him and no matter what we did or what we tried he continued to lose weight to the point of being so malnourished and emaciated, it broke my heart every day. For the last month of his life, Nick could not eat anything unless it was through a feeding tube. Memories of what he liked to eat and the foods he loved to enjoy haunt me all the time. In the article, I read that one of the places served Zeke's coffee.

Nick loved Zeke's coffee. When he was in the hospital, they started to let him order food from the fancy Marburg menu. Usually you can only get this menu if you pay extra for every meal. Well Nick was so thin and they just wanted him to eat, so I guess someone approved him to get these meals. Anyway, the food comes like room service and you get real china and silverware and the food was actually good. I always remember Nick with his china coffee cup, drinking his coffee with just a touch of cream and a touch of sugar. He would sip his coffee, eat his breakfast (what he could eat) and read the paper. He would keep the coffee cup and the thermos of coffee all day, just in case he wanted to have some later.

Before they started letting him have the Marburg food, we would always bring him food from home or buy carry-out food that he really liked, like Five Guys burgers or Chinese food. One thing he loved was his Dad's turkey stuffing. Now every time we have stuffing at home, I just cry and cry. The same thing goes every time I see the Caranation Instant Breakfast I would use to make him shakes...sneak attack.

Yesterday, I was cleaning out some Orioles stuff in my room. (Cleaning and pitching my stuff has become therapeutic in some way.) So what do I find? An old Orioles score card that Nick must have written when he was pretty young. He had written in the names of all the players and his printing was very "young." I just thought to myself, he will never get to go to another game or keep another scorecard. Then later, Glenn and I were listening to the O's game on the radio on the way to the store and Markakis hit a home run. It made me think of Nick when he was in the hospital this last time. We would always have the game on TV or on the radio, but, because of the trach and vent he couldn't cheer out loud, so he would raise his arm and cheer by pumping his fist in the air. Even if we weren't paying attention, we always knew the O's just did something right when Nick started pumping that arm. At first, I did the same motion and I said to Glenn, "That's what Nick would do." But then the tears just came as all the sadness came rushing back in the blink of an eye...sneak attack!

Later Sunday night, I had to go up into the attic to get something and another sneak attack happened. What was the first thing I saw? Nick's radiation form which is in the shape of his full head. I just started crying so hard. I put my hands on that form and it felt just like I was holding Nick's head. I used to put my hands on his head or hug his neck a lot when he was in the hospital bed, because that was about all I could do. I just want to be able to hold him again, touch his head full of hair and tell him how much I love him. God, how I miss him.