The status is not quo

Processing grief turns out to be complicated.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” the person on the end of the landline call — obviously a scammer — said to me in a clipped Indian accent. “I’m calling from Medicare health insurance. I’m hoping to speak with Deborah?”

“I’m afraid she’s passed away,” I told him.

“For real?” he said. I heard a click on the line as he hung up.

I’m not the same person I was. They tell me I never will be again.

The other night, I lay awake in bed at three in the morning as my mind raced through an involuntary clips show of audio and emotions from the last year. When I closed my eyes — every time, not just once or twice — I heard the beep of an ECG monitor, so loudly and clearly that I had to open them again to make sure it wasn’t real.

Maybe this is normal after this kind of trauma. I don’t know what normal is in this situation. It sometimes feels like I’m barely holding on.

I can’t dream about her. A few nights before, I lay awake thinking about this. I had a dream where an old friend told me everything that was wrong about myself. I had a dream where I was the Doctor’s companion and we were evading some new iteration of the Cybermen. I had a dream where I was moving to London. But not once in the three…