A Reason.

by Lori Dwyer on March 1, 2011 · 47 comments

I’ve always believed everything happens for a reason.

It’s difficult, to believe that, when something like this happens. It’s not so much difficult to keep believing it- although that’s hard enough as it is- it’s difficult to have believed it in the first place.

It’s feels cruel. It feels like I’ve been naive, ignorant. That the world is a much harsher, colder, far lonelier place than I had imagined.

How can I believe things happen for a reason, when such a brilliant person is gone from the world? What reason can there be for that? That two children have lost their father, the light of their tiny lives? How could there be a reason for that, what could possibly make that fair?

Nothing. Nothing at all. There is nothing that can come out of this, nothing that eventuate from this, that is worth my heart breaking like this. That is worth the kind of confusing, earthquaking pain and disruption my son is feeling right.

Nothing, that could be worth the world losing Tony.

There can never be a reason for this.

And yet… didn’t we know something was coming? I knew it, I could feel it in the air for weeks before this happened. Tony knew, that something bad was coming. My mother rang me that very morning, the morning this happened, to warn me that something was happening, something was going to happen.

A palpable tension in the air. Like the feeling of electricity bristling through oxygen before a thunderstorm.

My friend, Emma. She and I were the closest of friends in high school, and we became very, very close again in the weeks before this happened. And she kept saying to me….

“The moons are aligning… can you feel it?”

And dammit, I could.

(And does it feel like it’s not over yet, like it’s still going, as if this cycle is not yet finished? As if there is more to come…? Yes…. I think it does.)

So what it any surprise, really, that Emma’s father was a nurse in the ICU, while Tony was a patient? Or that Emma’s first kiss, back in primary school, turned out to be with my neighbour? The same one that cut Tony down and resuscitated him?

The same neighbour who shouldn’t have even been home that day, at that time. None of my neighbours should have been. The lovely woman who took myself and my children into her backyard, and sheltered us with lemonade and chatter about the Wiggles, she has worked the same shift for years. The day this happened was the first time, ever, that she has accidentally swiped off, and come home, an hour early.

And the ring, in the toaster….. a ring I bought Tony for his birthday, a year ago, that he lost after just three months of wearing. And never told me that he lost it, but confessed all to my brother. And my brother was right there, in the my kitchen, just after Tony died, when that ring fell out of the bottom of our toaster. The same toaster I had used every day- and cleaned at least sporadically- for nine months, without ever noticing a ring in there… how does a ring get in a toaster? I’m guessing it fell there, from the top of the microwave.

But how it stayed there undiscovered for so long is anyone’s guess.

There’s more, there’s always more, when I try and fold my head over the concept of there being some kind of higher purpose for this…. I worked in a hospital for years. Maybe so the tubes, the beeps, the smell,… it didn’t daunt me, when I needed every ounce of my sanity. I worked as a clown for years. Maybe that gave the strength to Pretend, to keep Pretending, that everything was just fine for my babies. I’m still Pretending now.

And then there’s the social work, the years of studying mental health. Having had so much experience with it myself… I’ve had people suggest maybe that’s why I was able to forgive him, understand it, etcetera… but that feels cruel too.

Surely, if my understanding of mental health was worth anything here, it would have been to save him, not just to be able to forgive him. He supported me, through my own near-psychosis, was there every step of the way…

Why couldn’t I do that for him?

I tried, I tell myself that, I tried.

But maybe not hard enough. Maybe it was the fact that he knew I struggled with anxiety in the first place, that made it more difficult for him to talk.

A reason for everything.

They don’t always have to be good ones.

***

I’m officially running away from the world for a week in four hours… I may blog, I may not. But I will certainly be back.

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