I started to feel anger, which helped enormously. It gave a focus, something to direct the barrage of feelings that I was experiencing. I wanted revenge against the illness, I wanted some sort of payback.
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We were told how brave we were, how brave he had been and how we had given him the strength to fight. We were told how much better that he was out of pain. These words did not comfort me. The bottom line was that Max was dead, which was such a huge pointless meaningless waste of a child who had shown such guts, character and self awareness.
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I returned to work with a determination to get my head down and resume my career. In order to function back in the real world I relied on a façade which I presented to everyone outside the immediate family. This mask of survival gave the appearance that I was coping. It was not there to protect others from our horrors, it was there to stop me going insane. It was there to stop me having a complete breakdown because as soon as it collapsed I knew it would be followed by an avalanche of pain and suffering which I was trying so desperately to stem. This was an avalanche which I could only let loose in small flurries of snow and the occasional collapse of a drift.
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I had completely closed down emotionally when Max became ill. All emotions drained deep into that subterranean lake of the subconscious. It was my way of coping. This did not mean I didn't care, I just didn't react. Not really. Of course you react on some sort of level but not the level of everyday life. It was my way of dealing with the often daily crises. It took a long time to start to feel any emotions again.
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Immediately after Max's death there was lots of pain which alternated with a feeling of nothing. This was a very conscious nothing. It was a physical feeling of being completely empty, a gut feeling of absolute vacuum. I was suspicious. I remember talking to my sister about two months after Max died. She asked how I was coping. I replied that it was difficult but if this was grieving then I felt it was going to be bearable. Although these emotions were journeys into a new land, I had visited similar places before. This was the terrain which consisted of thinking that you have some sort of understanding of your emotional state, only to find that you have no concept of what is happening to you at a deeper emotional level. I told her that I did not trust what I felt. I was right. I had troubled stirrings which hinted that something far more serious lay on the horizon.
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