09/02/13

   Unlike the first week of our grief journey with its daily milestones and all the things that demanded out time and attention, the days of the second full week without our Curtis all sort of blended together.
I was still off work, with no real thought of when or how or even if I would be able to go back. Casey  went back to school, although I wasn't sure how he managed to do that. I think it was easier for him to get back to a routine of sorts, back to some sense of normalcy, where he could be with his friends and get away from us and our house which was filled with so much sadness. I never really appreciated how difficult that must have been for him until much later, when some of my own anger, pain, and sorrow had somewhat diminished. I developed a new level of respect for my surviving son, especially at his being able to go back to the same school, classes, and activities of which Curtis had been a part. That must have been extremely difficult for him. Since my daughter went to school with my wife, and they were both still offtrack, it was just the three of us at home now. After we somehow survived those horrible first 10 days or so following the accident, it became much more difficult for me to pinpoint exactly when and in what order events unfolded. I can remember a lot of different things that happened to us over the next several months, but they seemed to blur together with no clearly defined edges to them. I think my mind, my emotions, and my soul had all been so overloaded during those first unthinkable days that they were in shut-down mode. It was quickly becoming apparent that all of this was beyond our ability to deal with using standard methods of coping. We would need to get help-help for myself and my wife as individuals, as a couple and as parents, and help for our children to get through this terrible ordeal. Nothing any of us had ever experienced before had prepared us for what we were now facing. For parents, the fear of losing a child is so overpowering that until it actually happens no parent wants to even consider such a thing is possible. When the unthinkable does happen, parents are completely blindsided as their orderly world comes crashing down around them. For our surviving son and daughter, finding ways to deal with all that had happened would take time and energy. Casey was older than Curtis by only 13 and one-half months, so he never remembered a time in his life without his brother. Carly, being the youngest, had always had two older brothers. For several years now, my wife and I had been the parents of three children. All those facts had now changed. Two  things would come to dominate our lives over the next several months: seeking professional help for all of us, and dealing with the American legal system. Fortunately for our family, the former would prove to be many times more successful, and ultimately, much less frustrating than the latter.