Sucker Punch

During the first month after CJ died there were only occassional instances where I would really lose it. These outbursts were almost always spawned by dramatic outside stimuli. For example... one day I was sitting at Starbucks and a young man about CJs age came in carrying a helmet exactly like CJs. CJ had convinced me he needed a $700 dollar Shoei helmet because it filtered out road noise better and had a higher crash rating than his previous helmet. I think he really just wanted the damn thing because it matched the metallic red paint on his bike. Anyway, this poor guy came into Starbucks with the same stupid helmet; my vision got all hazy and I started hyperventilating. I just sat there staring at him. I wanted to tell him to be careful, to watch out for bumps in the road, to pay attention to the other drivers. I wanted to tell him that somewhere there were people who would be crushed if he got hurt, people somewhere who loved him so much that they would never be ok again if something had happened to him. I wanted to tell him all the things I would have told CJ had I the chance. Awhile after he left I realized that I'd been clutching my hands so tightly that my fingernails had cut crimson cresent moons into my palms.
The second one I remember was about a week after the accident. CJs parents had gone out to the crash site. When they got back we were all standing outside talking and it was mentioned that there was something in the back of the truck I should see. For some reason it just never occurred to me what it would be: they'd picked up all the parts that had come off the bike when he wrecked. I recognized one of the signal lights and pieces of the side panels and headlights and windshield. Worst of all, they'd found the face plate off his helmet. I became absolutely hysterical... in that one moment I saw the accident, saw his body flying through the air and knew that he was dead. I just kept screaming over and over again "but it's broken! Why's it all broken?"
These incidents are what I call the sucker punches. They're the things that hit you out of the blue, the hits you're not ready for. They're immediate, they're intense, they're unexpected. These are the moments that grab you by the throat or twist in your gut, the moments where time stands still for one whole second, and when it starts again the pain is so immediate that you can no longer think or feel anything else. When they hit me I usually stop breathing and can no longer stand. The sucker punches are things that hit you in the face with reality, the moments when you can hold no other understanding in the universe except that they're dead, dead and gone.
I suppose they're different for everybody. Hell, they don't really even have to be spawned by anything particular event or item. It's just that when they hit you, you're not ready. It breaks down all your defenses and you can't hold on to your self-control anymore. For me, they started out rare and were usually induced by major coincidences or events. Now, three months later, just about everything hits me on the bad days. A song on the radio will bring up a memory, I'll say a line to an inside joke before I remember that no one else gets it. There'll be a man talking on his cell phone to his wife at the grocery store. The girl at the bank is wearing a new engagement ring. On the bad days anything, everything reminds me and those memories are painful. But it's not always so bad. There are some days when your thoughts are more pleasant, and you become grateful when you're reminded of things because at those times you know that the person you loved won't be forgotten, that you'll always have them there in the back of your thoughts to keep you company. The bad days will always be bad no matter what memories pop-up, and there will be good days that are ruined by really prominent sucker punches. But it's important for us to remember that there are good days, and to value them when they come along, because it's the good days that keep you afloat when the bad ones try to drown you in your own grief. So for the meantime, I try to be glad on the days when I can sing along to the radio just like I used to with him (he'd always wince when I sang off key), and I laugh at the joke anyway (you can't go backwards, lol). I still want to hit the girl at the bank... but well, you know, nobody's perfect.