Minesweeper

Minesweeper is a game I play in the middle of the night while pumping breast milk. If you’ve never played before, the object is to clear an abstract minefield without exploding a mine. The mine field is simply blank tiles; as you select one either a mine, a blank space, or a number signifying how many mines are adjacent to that tile is reveled. You often can not solve the game with 100% certainty and guessing is require. So you might think the game is going well when suddenly a mine appears and it’s game over.

This time of year is like minesweeper for me. My darling first son Blobby died a week before Christmas. I think of him every day, but even more so at this time of year. This time of year is especially good for flashbacks where it suddenly feels like I’m experiencing his death or events that happened near his death all over again. Sometimes I can predict what might trigger them and try to avoid them, but like minesweeper sometimes it just happens. Game over.

Everyone seems to think that having my darling, living boy means the pain of Blobby’s death should be gone. It’s not. I don’t really understand this attitude. If I’d had two older children and one died I can’t imagine that people would think it was OK to loose one.

So as wonderful as it has been to experience Christmas with my living son, I miss my first boy.