The Return of TV

It's Fall.  Most of my TV shows are returning now.  The last time I saw them I was laying in the hospital on bed rest, my special time with Ethan.  Now they are coming back on, and he is no longer with me.  

I just watched Grey's Anatomy and I can tell you this, the scene where they take Mark off of life support isn't just pretend, I lived it.  I heard the doctors and nurses tell me the same things.  That Ethan was given morphine so he wouldn't feel any of it.  That they couldn't really tell us how long it would take for Ethan to leave his body, but they thought it wouldn't take long.  Once we took him off of the ventilator, when he was in my arms, we had them extubate him.  It was the first time I had seen my son's face without tubes.  The first and only time.

Josh touched his legs and feet while I held him and caressed his face.  Soaking him in, trying to memorize him for the lifetime we were about to live without him.  We didn't have him connected to the machines telling us when he was gone, it was up to me to ask the nurses and doctors to check for a heartbeat.  He did breathe for a little while, and then that stopped.  It took a minute or so, as I remember it, for his heartbeat to stop afterwards.  5:55pm - the time he went to Heaven.

Some may wonder why I choose to watch the same shows, the shows that sometimes display grief as a theme.  I can't really explain it.  Maybe it is mostly that I have watched these shows forever.  The Annie from "before Ethan's death" watched them...maybe I am trying to cling onto small parts of her somehow.  

I haven't yet watched Private Practice (albeit not a great show anyway).  The last time I saw that one a baby died in it.  I watched that episode when I was in the hospital, having one of my non-stress tests done.  I remember avoiding the episode for several days, and then thought that was ridiculous.  It is pretend and my baby wasn't going to die...he was beyond the 28 week mark.  So I watched it.  Now I anticipate the story line to include a mother grieving the death of her baby.  We'll see, maybe I'll try it.  Maybe I won't.  Maybe.  

The strangest things are triggers.  Commercials for bad television shows being one of them.  Other times the triggers are most understandable.  Yesterday I walked into a room of a patient not knowing that the patient had her 4-day old baby with her.  Thankfully I held my shit together with them, and then promptly proceeded to cry with my colleagues afterwards.  When my baby was 4-days-old I was taking him off of life support.  The bottom line in all of this is that I miss my son.  It's simple.  I miss him.  A lot.