“Do you see yourself as a feminist?” Joey asked, and before I could answer, he continued, “I do. I think you’re a feminist.” He smiled in approval.
His declaration had surprised me. “Why do you say that?”
I won’t detail his reasons because it’ll sound boasty, plus feminism isn’t the point. The knowing is.
This was one of those moments when I realized that my son knew me better than I knew he knew me. He saw me, and he loved me—layers deep. He seemed to understand my motivations and what drove me.
And that—THAT–is Neosporin for my wounds.
Wounds: As the shock of his death incrementally wears off, I adjust—sometimes squirm—inside this fuller iteration of the “freshest knowing,” the newest normal, my constant, updated reality in real-time. While my instinct is to reject each new tweak, I have no choice but to accept it.
Where can I go to avoid it? Nowhere. It’s foisted upon me.
This gradual acceptance has been the most surprising and harshest of life’s adaptations. It doesn’t check my calendar to see if it’s a good day for a gut punch.
Along with the shock thinning over time, which equates to the thicker, more painful reality, there are moments of grace. Grace, such as remembering how Joey—the Joey I knew, raised, loved, grieved——grieve—knew me in ways I didn’t know he knew me. Or things I didn’t realize he had absorbed or remembered.
–like the time, not so long ago, he told me he knew why, when he and his sister were little, I began running long distances simply so that I could get to them in an emergency if I had no vehicle.
As I squirm, stretch, reposition, and adjust, I must accept that I have no wheels to get to him, and my legs aren’t built for that distance.
But in this new normal is this grace—this potentially healing salve: the irrevocable, undeniable truth that we were and are soul-connected regardless of any temporary distance or anything else, which I will gladly embrace.
