24

It is amazing to me how one bad night can make the world seem so bleak. Maybe it is the rain. Maybe it is an ear infection that kept my six year old up and screaming all night. I can’t decide.

Today I feel a million years old and unable to focus on anything. I am feeling the enormous pressure of being a single mom and the helplessness that comes with the job. I could not even run to the pharmacy without calling someone for help. Thankfully my wonderful neighbor was home to sit with the kids for ten minutes so I could go alone. But before I called her I was panicking. Do I really have to get the kids dressed and bring them out, sick and miserable, to make a two minute errand? I feel incredibly frustrated that I must rely on so many these days. I am used to being able to deal with my own problems on my own and now I just can’t. How am I supposed to do anything at all by myself? How can I possible raise my two children properly all alone and expect that we will all be just fine – I just don’t know.

Tonight I am so tired that the weight of the world feels heavier than usual. Everything looming ahead of me seems impossible and scary and awful. I am feeling sorry for myself again and I blame it on the lack of sleep. But still, I am missing my husband and really could have used his help last night and he was nowhere to be found – just gone!

More importantly I don’t know what to do about 24. Jack Bauer and I have come a long way together and my husband was the only man who got between us. It was the one and only show my husband and I could agree to watch together. Otherwise he was knee deep in politics while I am totally into vampires – but 24 brought us together.

Tonight is the premier and I am taping it as I don’t know if I can actually watch it. I want to but feel like I will be looking over at the empty seat on the couch wondering if ghosts can watch television with me – and really just missing him even more.

I know this sounds absurd – but in my world it seems easier to obsess on the most ridiculous than focus on what is really going on. I can’t believe my husband killed himself without knowing what was going to happen to Jack. If anything would have kept him going – I truly thought this would. He used to pretend that Jack was giving him secret messages through the TV and that he was a secret agent. I know if you knew my husband you would understand – he only wanted to be Jack Bauer. So tonight I must decide; do I honor my husband’s memory and watch alone or do I erase the past and leave 24 with everything else that causes me sorrow and grief.

I should probably not even dwell on this tonight and try and catch up on sleep. But as is the case with me on most nights – despite how utterly exhausted I am – sleep will elude me until much much later.

I can only hope that we all sleep through the night and tomorrow is a better day. Maybe I will just go to bed and start reading the many books of mourning that lie untouched waiting for me to start the healing process. Books like “Why Me G-d, a Jewish guide for Coping with Suffering” or “The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning” or “How do we tell the Children?” or “Remember my Soul.”

On second thought – Jack Bauer is starting to look better and better to me . . .