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Today I have a panic attack. I have not had one for some time. I am downtown, leaving a meeting when I feel my heart start to pound and the world begin to whirl around me. Somehow I make it to my truck and I lie on the front seat wondering if I am having a heart attack. Eventually the panic subsides and I am left with a nauseated, shaky, emptiness.

I drive home and sit in the driveway, confused. There is a for sale sign in my yard, and the beautiful rosebush to the left of the house has been chopped down. I wonder who did that; the bush stood more than six feet high. Gradually I realize this is not my house, or it isn’t anymore. I now see I have unconsciously driven to a house Colby and I lived in from the time he was nine until he was twelve. It was the house we lived in before we bought the house we (I) have now. I haven’t been by the house in over a year. Colby and I always included it in our “tour of homes” that we did every Thanksgiving weekend. We had lived in eleven houses and each year we took an afternoon and visited them all. As I look at the house I can see that it has new siding and someone has added a railing to the porch. Good. The house badly needed updating. I drive around the block and turn into the alley that runs behind the house. Colby’s tire swing is still there, but our vegetable garden has been turned into lawn.

I park in the alley and stare at Colby’s tire swing. I can almost see him there, swinging far higher than I am comfortable with, then climbing out of the tire as it swings to sit on top of it. Our dog, Sundance, is there too, running around the yard, tail wagging so fast I can barely see it. Colby is dressed as a pirate and yells “Yo, ho ho!” at the top of his lungs every time the tire swings toward the house. I am sitting in a lawn chair on the patio watching him. Our cat, Bootsie, is sitting by my feet and eying a bird that has landed on the fence. It is a wonderful memory.

All of them are gone now. Colby, Sundance, and Bootsie. I feel abandoned. Left behind. Forgotten . . . and I am overwhelmed with sadness. I finally put my truck in gear and drive home, this time to the right house. I hesitate to call this house home anymore as it feels alien in Colby’s absence. I open the door and sit carefully on a once familiar couch. The room, my living room, feels like it belongs to someone else. I spend the rest of the afternoon sitting on a strange couch in a foreign room and wonder what in the world I am supposed to do now.

Escape

It has been suggested that during this holiday season that I have an "escape" plan. This means:
1. not commiting myself to situations and events I really do not want to go to, and
2. only committing myself to those events where I can quickly and gracefully exit if I need to.

So, no parties, no receptions, no crowds of people moving around. No malls, or crowded movie theaters. My brain, everyone tells me, is still on overload. That's why I can't process lots of speech, sounds, color and movement all at the same time. The escape also goes for everyday hum-drum activities. Don't get into a long line at the grocery store because I may be ready to bolt before I get up to the cashier. Get out of the house at least once a day for something, even if it is a short walk. That's probably good advice for anyone, not just those of us who are grieving parents.

The importance of this plan becomes obvious today as I sit in a very cheerful dental hygenist's chair. Christmas music is playing and it isn't too long before I feel trapped. Sure enough I break out in a cold sweat and my heart begins thumping. Typical symptoms of a panic attack. Not too many places you can go when you are stuck in a dentist's chair so I focus on a dot on the ceiling and try to breathe deeply and slowly. Not too easy when you have ten fingers and a couple of metal prods in your mouth.

It is becoming evident that I need some medical help for these panic attacks, for my anxiety. A counselor I saw recently went through my behavioral changes since Colby passed. The either not sleeping or sleeping too much, the not eating or eating too much, the either not crying or crying too much. These are apparently classic signs of anxiety/panic and long term they can have devastating effects on my health.

My first response is to think that it doesn't matter, that long-term I will have no family. That's even true of the short term. What does it matter that in ten years I will be in bad health? There will be no one to care. Plus, I'd get to see Colby again that much earlier. But I quickly realize those thoughts are not normal, not healthy. A friend of Colby's has opened the door to a doctor who may help. With no medical insurance I now have to try to figure out how to pay for it. So I'll see. In the meantime I will plan my escape routes through the holidays. Come January, life should be a lot less stressful.

Schoolbus

I am stuck in traffic. A school bus heading my direction is stopped, lights flashing, while a mom talks with the driver. The conversation lasts several minutes. I begin to get impatient when I recall a similar incident that happened 19 years ago. But this time I am the Mom and the bus is on a quiet street in a suburb of Nashville.

Colby had wanted to ride a school bus from the time he knew what a school bus was. He must have been about 18 months old then. I remember taking him to the bus parking lot in Minnesota, where I grew up, when he was a little over two and we stayed there in the car for more than half an hour, looking at acres of buses. Colby was as thrilled as any toddler could be.

On the first few days of kindergarten I took Colby to school. The first day the parents were supposed to meet the teacher. On the second day I had to sign some papers, the third day I had to drop something off. So it wasn't until the end of the first week of school that Colby finally got to ride in a schoolbus. He waited at the end of the driveway with several neighborhood kids, while I stood halfway between the house and the end of the drive. When the bus came he gave me a wave and marched behind the other kids across the road and into the schoolbus. But just as quickly Colby marched back out and began to run across the road. The driver, a burly guy named Charlie, jumped out of the bus and caught Colby before he reached the center line. I half walked, half ran to the bus and began a conversation with Colby and Charlie. All was well. Colby just had a bit of a panic. It happened to a lot of kids. After a few minutes Colby sat on a seat inside the bus and Charlie closed the bus door and waved goodbye.

The drivers of the three cars who had lined up behind the bus all gave me a friendly wave as they passed and I remember being so grateful that they were not angry at the delay. I think of that now and when this bus, today's bus, finally pulls away from the mom, amid the rush of accelerating cars and a few rude gestures from other drivers I slow to give the mom a friendly wave. She looks surprised, then smiles and waves back. I wave not only to show her I am not impatient about the delay, but to thank her for triggering a nice memory about my son.