#1 of 92: Trying Out a Wet Suit as a Metaphor

You know when you get out of the pool and go in the locker room and start peeling off your bathing suit and it sticks like heck until it winds up, rolled up at your feet? That’s me. I’ve been peeling my sad suit off.

It feels great.

And while I’m doing this, I’m in a graduate class on Death & Dying at UWM. The lectures, the homework, the class discussions are scholarly and heartfelt at the same time. I am, by far, the oldest person in the class, possibly in the building, and, not surprisingly, the only person with my very recent lived experience. Yesterday, we discussed research on grief in children, reflected on our own early experiences with death, and talked with a geology professor who’d walked across campus to tell us about Camp Hope, a twice a year weekend camp for, yes, kids who’ve lost parents.

Research tells us that young children, like the one who calls flared pants ‘fire pants’ and has lost her grey hoodie three times so far this school year, flip from crying (grieving) to playing in minutes. Older kids ask a ton of questions and teenagers go mute. When asked, they’ll say they’re fine. “I’m okay.” It’s actually what I always say as well. A teenager at heart.

I listen to all this and because it’s in a classroom and it’s research, the discussion feels arm’s length and cerebral and that’s a clean and easy place for me right now. It was an oddly good time to take this class.

Anyway, about the bathing suit. You can’t sit around in a wet suit. After a while, it itches, bunches up in inconvenient places, makes you want to jump out of your skin. And then you finally get it off and there you are free and unrestrained? That’s my plan.

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92 days from October 1 to December 31

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Photo by Kate M on Unsplash