Trauma Mamas

Backpacking upon a mention of my puzzling in the wee hours of the night when I couldn’t sleep on THE day, today, the day after THE day, I couldn’t sleep again. Last night I chose the couch and TV to clear my head and try to fall back to sleep. But other nights, or racing heart mornings, or after work decompression sessions I choose to sit down at a puzzle.
In the very beginning, when we were still in shock and disbelief, something took me over one day and I grabbed a puzzle from the upstairs game room closet and dumped it out on the living room floor. Bent over, hunchbacked, on all fours searching through the pieces. Each pieces was a struggle to find the matching emptiness. Each piece I found and put into the void was like picking up a tiny piece of my life before and putting it back together. Like the Japanese Art of breaking a vase and glueing it back together, not always perfectly, but together. Enough to hold water, enough to see the bigger picture of the puzzle, enough to function and pass as a human being again.
I didn’t function as a person until months after the accident. But during my puzzling I could think about the puzzle and my daughter. I could think about what happened and try to put the moments together to make sense as I looked for a piece with two knobs and one socket that would fit.

When I was done with the puzzle there was an accomplishment, but not a feeling of being finished. In grief it’s an accomplishment to go back to work, or go for a walk or smile and laugh again, but your grieving isn’t done. You puzzle isn’t finished. You have to start a new puzzle and work on another aspect of yourself. Or finesse that aspect so it works better, closer to the before you.
I love my puzzles. The quietness or the podcasts playing in background. My heart racing when I near the end of the picture. All to admire it for a day or two, sweep back into the box, give it away and start a new one. Always, always starting over and over every day in grief, always missing one piece of my own puzzle, my daughter.

-B