Sundays are the worst. Sundays I disintegrate into utter internal chaos. My mind flings itself, a ramrod against the doors I’ve worked so hard to keep closed all week, opening one after the other onto adjoining charred cells each rank with the sour smell of fear. This one reeks of doubt—did I do enough, did I say enough, did I fight long enough, did I make the right choices at the right time—this one spews the acid of panic into my face—how can I live the rest of my life and never see him again? Never hear his voice, touch his face, run my fingertips through his hair?—Here, this one, filled with the smothering smoke of disbelief—is my child really dead? How could he have been here so full of life, then gone? Is he still gone? He is not coming back? This one, heated beyond bearing with the rage of an unquenched fury, the fire fueled by my vitriolic wish to destroy all that continues, myself included, because he cannot live. Here is where I spend a great deal of time, sweating drops of blood, coiled in a corner, a dying snake, before I can, slither myself forward into the last cell, the one with the mirror propped against the wall showing me who I have become. A silver shining that reflects the destruction that make-up, a new haircut, or pretty earrings cannot disguise. Witness to the fact that I have forgotten to eat, forgotten to close the refrigerator door, or put the dishes away, forgotten to remember that I am still alive physiologically and require a minimum of attention just to remain so. Though why I can’t say.

I turn from a book, to something onine. From something online to the television. And all the while I am losing Maxx. Again, as if those days were happening now. Again and again I see his illness begin its slow strangulation. I hear his voice and am with him again in the hospital rooms, oncology, the ER, coaxing him to eat. Shaving his sweet head. Lying next to his body heated with low degree chronic fever, rushing for Kleenex to staunch his constant nosebleeds. Trying to memorize the marks and small blemishes on his back because I know in my heart he will die. Trying to sniff the skin behind his ears and stifle my screams. These are my Sundays.

This is what I do. I sleep until noon. I wake up and have coffee but no food. I look at my email from Chadwicks, and Victoria’s Secret, the Body Shop and Amazon. Steve and I will talk about what we will do, but in my head the clanging and banging of the ramrod bashing against the doors has begun and I know I will go nowhere, do nothing. I will read for a bit if I can. But soon, sooner all the time I will start the downward slide. I will begin to stare into a corner. Sometimes I get cold. Then I get restless. I will move back and forth from the living room to the kitchen. Finally, I will stand at the sink, arms spread holding the counter where I start to cry. This is where it usually begins for me standing at the counter or the stove. It is there in that kitchen, that formerly hallowed room where I cooked and fed and nurtured my tiny family, that my resolve, my shallow hope for something, anything, dissolves. Then I start to wander back and forth crying and talking, shaking my head. I will grab a sponge and a bottle of spray bleach and begin to spray and wipe. Crying and spraying. I don’t know what or why I am doing anything. I have come undone.

Sunday, used to be the day before the work and school week began filled with chores and homework and preparation. Now, there are no preparations. I don’t care what comes on Monday. Or Tuesday. These are simply days that pass until the next round begins. Sometimes I can wait until 3 or 4 before I take a pill and have a beer. Today it was a bit earlier. I went to sleep again about four hours after I had awakened. Then I get up to have something to eat, wait a few more hours, take another sleep med and go back to bed for the night.

I wonder what people think we do as we’re “healing,” (a favorite outlier word to describe a process that occurs in a Disney movie when after being orphaned in a forest fire, or watching both parents die in a stampede, the lonely little cub makes new friends each of whom in his loving and quirky way cares for him until he can be whole and strong again.) “Did you have a nice weekend.”? Sometimes I say, “ Fine.” Sometimes, I say “Not so great.” What I want to say, no, scream, into their dull-eyed faces, is “Don’t ask me about my weekends ever again.” Asking me about my weekend is like asking a prisoner if the wrack this Sunday was as painful as last, or the hot pokers which burned your skin were just as delightfully sharp and sizzling as they were when you last experienced them. Keep it simple. Don’t ask. Whatever we did or did not do is something we don’t wish to share with anyone in any case.

Here's to another Sunday. I'll try do some Yoga tomorrow.