Orion Rises

I am almost always sick on the 27th of December.  Typically, it’s some kind of respiratory infection. Colds and the flu are pretty standard and of course, in recent years, COVID has been thrown into the mix.  My lungs aren’t picky and appear to be more than happy to provide a home for any virus that happens to be even remotely nearby during this season. Last year I was in Skopje, North Macedonia when the worst of whatever I had hit.  Having depleted my supply of medicine and with no pharmacies open at that time of night, I took a forty-minute shower in an attempt to soothe the aches, ease the chills, and warm up enough to get back in bed because both the heating and the blankets in the hotel were, shall we say, less than adequate (the reason I was in Skopje of all places and staying in that particular hotel is best left for another time).  

Some years, instead of a respiratory infection I end up with something gastrointestinal—my GI tract is also not particularly discerning when it comes to what it allows to make me sick. The most sensational of those instances occurred in 2006.  That year, December 27th bestowed upon me the first of the GI bleeding that would eventually lead to my diagnosis with an autoimmune disease and years of, at best, mildly effective treatments that yielded few benefits and produced all the side effects. 

The predictability of my yearly ailment might seem like a quirky coincidence or maybe even a funny story to tell, but it is neither. It all started the year that the early hours of December 27th brought both the birth and death of my first child.  I was fifteen, pregnant as a result of one of the hundreds of rapes I had experienced the prior summer, and forced by my trafficker to give birth sometime between my sixth and seventh month while tied down in the backyard.  The entire process was extremely violent, excruciatingly painful, exceptionally cruel, and ended with my newborn son being murdered as I was forced to watch. 

At that point in my life, I had been raped and tortured for years and had learned to not only survive it all, but set it aside when the morning came and live an otherwise normal life (more stories for another time). Nonetheless, despite the decade-plus of tolerating ever-increasing levels of abuse, nothing I had endured up to that point equipped me for watching my child be killed, nor did any of it prepare me for the grief that would swallow me for the next two years.

None of my previous experiences came even close to creating the type and intensity of pain I felt after I watched the baby I had just given birth to, the baby I never got a chance to hold, the baby I had learned to love and want, be killed. Completely overwhelmed with trying to manage the unspeakable and nearly unbearable agony, I retreated from the world, both physically and mentally, spending most of my time alone, speaking so rarely you would have been forgiven if you thought I was mute, and growing increasingly ill as the grief pulled me farther from life and pushed me ever closer to death with each passing day.

Yet, however far the grief dragged me in one direction, something else compelled me to struggle in the other. As tempting as it was to surrender to the anguish, I refused to do so, having learned long ago that wounds heal, pain itself won’t actually kill you, and that the worst of whatever is happening will always pass and give way to something new.

Each morning I forced myself out of bed and went through the motions of life.  Each afternoon I would sit, fully clothed, sometimes for hours, in the bathtub, a razor held to my wrist, just above the artery, poised and ready to help release me from the suffering. Each night I lay in bed, exhausted from the sheer effort required to take even a single breath, and told myself that however improbable, however small the chance, however diminutive the odds, there remained a possibility that tomorrow would be better than today.

I remember little about my existence during this time of my life other than the rather grim and tedious routine I had established, yet by the time my senior year of high school was about halfway through, the period with the most intense sorrow had eased and I remember slowly, cautiously, returning to the land of the living, having clawed my way out of the wasteland of grief one moment, one breath, and one step at a time.

Twenty-eight years have passed since the night he died and excluding the two immediately following his murder, each has been spent with relentless determination to live as fully and intensely as possible.  I have worked ceaselessly to move through the heartache and make something beautiful from the horror of my younger years.  Though there will always be room for growth and healing, one of the areas I think I have had the most success in is how I have ultimately responded to living with his loss. 

Most of the time I live with an enormous sense of gratitude that he existed and that I had the extraordinarily good fortune to have him in my life, if only temporarily. Nevertheless, each year, no matter where I am in the world, no matter what I am doing, no matter how much love and light I am surrounded with, as the days get colder and shorter, as holiday décor appears, and as Orion rises in the night sky, it seems my body remembers what happened that night and for a brief interlude, the grief and sorrow return to mourn his death.

This year was no exception. The telltale signs of a respiratory infection made their appearance early in the evening on the 26th. I gathered the requisite supplies for the impending congestion, fever, chills (and accompanying body aches), went to bed early, and resigned myself to spending the next week or so too sick to do much of anything. Much to my surprise the symptoms were relatively mild and persisted only through the 29th. Compared to years past, this was a significant decrease in both the severity and duration of illness. I was intrigued by this and spent some time deliberating the idea that this could be more than a random coincidence.

Though I will never know for sure (and as a scientist, I must fully acknowledge there might very well be a reason based solidly in biology) I am leaning towards the explanation that this year things were different because sometime in November, my concept of the day shifted considerably. I am not sure why, or what prompted it, but suddenly I understood it to be not just the day he died, but also the day he was born.  While that may seem obvious to even the most casual observer, until then, I had only ever thought of it as the day he died.

This change in perspective had a remarkable effect on how I experienced the days and weeks leading up to the anniversary. As the time drew near, I realized I wasn’t actively bracing myself for pain the way I normally did.  Instead, I was almost looking forward to the day and even found myself considering doing something to mark the occasion. 

Over the years I have been told many times, by many people, that I should write about my life and share my story with the world.  I have always hesitated, never feeling the time was right.  Until now.  This year, when the 27th arrived, although my body ached with his loss, I was happy because my first thought of the morning was, “Today is Jake’s birthday.”  I took a few moments to appreciate the significance of what was happening, and then I started to write, about all of it, but mostly about him, because he wasn’t in my life only temporarily as I once believed.  He is and will remain, intricately, intimately, and eternally involved in my every moment.   

I expect I will always experience a range of emotions on and around his birthday. I may continue to get sick each year, my body remembering and responding to the extraordinary trauma of the experience. Or I may not. Each year I heal a little more and perhaps there will come a time when my body remembers and responds instead to the extraordinary love of the experience. Only time will tell.

What I do know for certain is that as the days get shorter and colder, as holiday décor appears, as Orion rises in the night sky, and December 27th approaches, I will think of it first and foremost as Jake's birthday.