This Is Not a Fairy Tale

It's a bit like a fairy tale, this story of mine. Not in the "happily ever after" sense, for we all know how my story ends. It's like the original tales, by the Brothers Grimm, where the stepsisters cut off their toes to try to make the shoe fit. Mine begins, 'Once upon a time...' just as all the modern tales do; 'Once upon a time, there was a happy couple with a beautiful daughter, a beautiful home, everything they could ever wish for, except a son. Then one day, the happy couple found out they were to have a son, their perfect family, and they had nothing left to wish for, for their happily ever after was about to come true.'

Except it didn't. And in the aftermath of death, we tried to sort out 'ever after.' For no matter how stark the real stories by Grimm, Cinderella still got her man; Rapunzel, after years of wandering, found her prince; and Hansel and Gretel escaped the witch, who burned to death. The bad met their just end; the righteous prevailed. And in my story, in your story, the righteous don't prevail, though we are left trying to learn how to live with it for the rest of our lives.

I was told by someone very wise, when I asked her how I live with this unimaginable sorrow for the rest of my life, that, one day, Ben's death would become a part of me, like my blue eyes are a part of me. Something I carry with me, always, in every moment. I clung to those words, waiting for the time when that would be true, as it is for me now. But anyone can look at me and see that I have blue eyes; only those I've told can look at me and see Ben's death etched across my face.

His death has become a part of who I am, as that wise woman said, though I wish that part of me wasn't so hard to share with those who don't know. What she didn't tell me - and perhaps what she herself did not know - was that the biggest part of me, my son's death, is the biggest secret I keep. There are no conversations that include, "I'm from Pennsylvania originally, I'm home with my kids right now, been married for 12 years, and have a dead son."

And I pretend I have the fairy tale, the happily ever after. I hide the biggest part of me from all but a select few and wonder how anyone could miss seeing the hollow emptiness I carry with me always.

Here's the Truth

So, from my last post, in which I got the idea of the meme slightly wrong (I told two lies, rather than two truths), here's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but:

1. Yes, my husband proposed 6 weeks after we met. We knew on our second date that this was "it."

2. Yes, I have been married twice (kind of) - but to the same man. We got married in England, where we met and where he is from, and got married in the chapel of his college at Cambridge University. In England, however, you can only be "officially" married in a registered building, which the chapel was not, so we held the official marriage in a registry office (like a justice of the peace) the day before, and held the religious ceremony the next day.

3. True. I wanted to be a Rockette (I loved watching them do kick lines) but I can't dance. I also wanted to be a jockey but realized, at the age of 7, that I had to stop growing immediately. (I'm kind of tall.)

4. True. Hey, I've got two degrees in English, what did you expect?

5. Nope. I love dogs. My daughter, however, is terrified of them and I have no idea why. I think it's genetic - no one in my husband's family likes dogs.

6. False. Can't stand the things. Told my parents when I was 8 years old I was not going to marry a man who liked lima beans. And I didn't.