Salutations

How are you doing?

Is everything alright?

Are you doing okay?

I wish I had a sign that I could put over my head that constantly updated my current mood in order to cut down on the idle chitchat of everyday. Most of the time these questions are more than uncomfortable, and I have to lie:

I’m fine, really.

I’m okay.

I’m doing good.

For people who are really concerned, the question doesn’t chafe as much. I can be honest with them. They’ll listen to me. But for people who don’t really care… I wish they would stop being polite and just walk by me without so much as a glance. I don’t care about you enough to tell you the truth about how am, and you don’t care enough to hear it. Let’s just ignore each other until we’re forced into a situation where we have to interact. Until then, good day.

Take That, Cretin!

I had a disagreement with my work keyboard today. See it thought that the sound of the phone ringing constantly for hours was soothing, and I find it just a tad irritating. He suggested we settle it as gentleman, with a bout of fisticuffs, and of course I came out triumphant after just a single punch, and left him… slightly the worse for wear. Nothing that he didn’t deserve, and nothing that won’t heal over time.

I had a similar disagreement with the bed in our guest bedroom last week in regard to a video game, but he preferred a resolution of no holds barred wrestling, which I was more than happy to oblige. This was a slightly longer encounter, yet despite punching and throwing as much as I could I ended up just wearing myself out. He’s a resilient fellow, that guest bed is. We’ll probably have words and another match again in the days to come.

Anger and insanity has been hitting me very hard these past few weeks. Luckily for me there are plenty of inanimate objects around with varying degrees of stupid opinions and ideas for me to pick fights with.

Circles and Walls

I've been thinking a lot about grief and how to get through it. It's like being trapped inside a large maze inside our hearts and minds. We wander aimlessly upon our first entrance, and slowly we start to learn the turns and deadends. There're no guides or signs to lead us on our way, and every so often the proverbial minotaur rounds a corner and punches us in the stomach. 

This happens a lot before we figure out how to duck him.

Occasionally we meet friends along the way who point us in the right direction. Some walk with us, trying to find their own new self, and some have been to the center and back so many times that it's like walking a straight line. 

Slowly, with time and effort and perseverance, we learn just how to navigate our grief maze and find our way to the new person that we've become.

For me, I'm still trying to figure how to outrun that minotaur.

Really? Just... Really?

I thought I was doing okay, I really did. Then Fran called. Fran is a patient who I’ve had a more involved relationship with due to frequent calls for various issues, and a way of subtly forcing me to talk to her for long periods of time about my life. She used to jokingly say that if she were 50 years younger she could have had me at the snap of her fingers, and that she had legs like Betty Grable, whoever that was. We had a pretty good patient/customer service rep relationship.

I knew it would eventually come, but I was dreading (or looking forward to?) this call. Would I tell her what happened? Would I just gloss over it and hope she didn’t ask? We knew each other well enough that I was sure she would want to know why I had been gone for nearly two months, but it wasn't until the call actually came that I knew I was going to tell her about my son.

She knew something was off with me from the first hello, so I guess I can give her credit for that. At first she assumed I was fighting with my wife, and suggested I just apologize and get on with the make-up sex. I told her my relationship with my wife was fine, and that it was just other things bother me, and asked whether she was really interested. She said she was, and so I told her, in summary, what had happened to Aiden.

Fear of Life

Angie and I have been arguing. Not the screaming, yelling kind of fighting reserved for more explosive couples and certain TV dramas. Rather it was a quiet, 'I don't want to talk to you, look at you, think about you' type of argument that is, in some ways, far more devastating. And definitely harder to resolve. When you don't know why the other person is angry or upset and can't get them to communicate... Let's just say we both learned a valuable lesson in the department of digging deeper for meaning in each others words before jumping to conclusions.

Before I go on, the argument was resolved and largely originated from a misunderstanding. She misunderstood something I had said, and I misunderstood her mood as a result.

The argument was about starting to have children again. Her stance was, 'Why haven't you gotten me pregnant again yet?', and mine was 'I'm terrified and I'd like some more time to process our loss and prepare for a new life before I go jumping into anything'. Even though everything has been settled, I'd like to explore and describe my fears a little bit, and see who else suffers like this.

The Clever Biscuit

This is a story I came up with about a month after we lost Aiden. Hope you enjoy it:

The tale of the clever biscuit begins with it’s creation. There once was a bag of rice stored in a basement with various unused odds and ends. One day the earth shook and the bag tipped over, ever so slightly brushing against a tiny brass lamp. Now, this was no ordinary lamp. This was one of those ancient middle-eastern lamps.  You know the kind, they look like teapots for some reason.

Well, just like any other middle-eastern brass lamp in any fairy tale that you’ve ever heard of, this one had a Genie inside of it, and that Genie was the wishing kind. Unfortunately for the Genie, there’s not a whole lot of wishing that a bag of rice needs to have done, it being unable to think critically and lacking a way with which to convey the thoughts it doesn’t have. So the Genie, with a careful bit of mimickry and large dose of ventriloquism, decided that the bag of rice would most likely wish for sentience and a mouth as it’s first two wishes. *POOF* *POOF*!

The Reason Behind the Askew

Hello, my name is Kevin. Being my first post, I'd like to use this space to detail why I've decided to share my thoughts and words on the almighty interweb.

Two months and 14 days ago I had a son.  I've never been more proud of any creation before or since that little boy graced my life. His name was Aiden, and he was the spitting image of his old man: Tall, skinny, fiery red hair, hands like a 90 year old, and eyes like... Well, I never got to see his eyes, and that's something I regret profoundly. You see my son, my little Aiden, was stillborn at 37 weeks.

Thursday, August 12th, started as a normal day. I woke up early and showered, dressed for work, said goodbye to my wife Angie and rubbed her belly while I told Aiden how excited I was to see him.  Angie was due August 30th, and today she was having a standard doctor's visit. A couple of weeks ago she had begun seeing him every week for regular checkups.