One Year, Six Months: Memories of You
"Sew this up with threads of reason and regret so I will not forget.
I will not forget how this felt one year, six months ago.
I know I cannot forget.
I cannot forget."
And yet.
I forgot.
--
I walked into a rehab facility in March of 2018 looking for help to stop drinking. It was ruining my life. The drinking started six years earlier when I was 26, and it used to be fun. But then it wasn't.
A speaker told me something that stuck with me.
He said to ask for help every morning and give thanks every night.
I liked the sound of that, and in that auditorium I wrote an "h" on my left wrist and a "t" on my right one.
A few months later I got those tattooed so that I wouldn't forget.
If I was to be the man I wanted to be, I couldn't forget that I was just one person, and I needed help, and I should always give thanks.
When people asked about the tattoos and I would make jokes about what it meant. Heads or tails for indecision was a favorite. Houston Texans was over the top ridiculous.
But then I always tell the truth. The real story. There’s no shame and I’m free to share it.
The tattoos I got in Indianapolis before we ever had a child.
To ask for help at the start of each day and give thanks for it at the end.
An h and a t.
—
I did drink another couple of times after those tattoos, but I was almost to the end by that point. And I knew it. It was a good thing to end.
Then we moved to Texas.
It was there I had my last drink, and it was there where we had Maddie, and it was there where learned on a fateful day in 2022 that Connor's heart was no longer beating.
It was our sixth wedding anniversary.
Connor was supposed to be born earlier that week, and the induction would have been the following week.
We knew we needed help, and I got a little less thankful.
I never once considered drinking in the wake of the tragedy – the reasons and regret were still sewn up, and I didn't forget the pain it caused me. Sometimes people in the rooms of AA are surprised that I didn't drink when we lost a son, but it's beautifully simple: once I learned how to pause just long enough to think it through, the overwhelming evidence was that drinking was just going to make whatever I was facing worse. It wasn't hard to see that if I went back to drinking after we lost Connor, I might never come out of it. It actually hasn't been hard to stay sober, which probably explains why I feel some sort of way when someone makes a big deal about it. It sometimes feels like the "accomplishment" means more to some people than it does to me, which is just another confusing thing for an autistic person to figure out.
But I figured out how to not drink. And I didn't forget about not drinking.
I just started forgetting about be thankful. It was a little hard to be thankful when our world collapsed. It was impossible to be thankfully when Connor was born and there was silence in the air.
I will never forget that silence. It was the loudest thing I've heard in my life.
--
A few months later we got matching "Connor" tattoos.
I don't... exactly know why we did that. It was clearly part of the grieving process. But it's not like we were going to forget him. It's not like we wanted it to be a conversation starter.
The best I can come up with is that we knew we were permanently scarred, and so we might as well make it official.
So we got matching tattoos of our lost son in the only city that ever saw his beautiful face: Denton.
And when I got than Connor tattoo, I talked about the "h" and the "t". I looked at them. I told the story. But I didn't pause long enough to reflect on if I had lost my way, or if I was losing my way. I don’t really remember that day now, so I can’t say how lost I was then. All I know is that at some point along the way I got really lost.
Somewhere along the way between getting those matching tattoos and selling the house and the summer we lived as nomads before the new house in Carmel was built... somewhere along the way I didn't even know what I wanted out of life.
I didn't know if I had accomplished everything there was for me.
The present was nothing but pain.
All I could do was sing.
"I'm falling into memories of you and things we used to do.
Follow me there.
A beautiful somewhere.
A place that I can share with you."
Where was I trying to go? Who was I trying to share memories with? Every answer sparked two more questions, and I've always had so many questions.
To be honest, I didn't even believe a beautiful somewhere existed. I think I hoped it did, but I was losing faith. Maybe at some point I completely lost it.
--
At some point I forgot all about my tattoos. In fact, I have a few more lined up of what I want. More scars that I know that I have that I'm apparently convinced the world wants to see. Scars that I want to transfer from the inside of me to the outside of me.
And I forgot about who I was. Or maybe I never who I was.
"I can tell that you don't know me anymore.
It's easy to forget.
Sometimes we just forget.
And being on this road is anything but sure.
Maybe we'll forget.
I hope we don't forget."
Now I was singing about myself. The song got confusing because life was confusing. This post has confused me for weeks because life has been confusing.
Because this post started a couple of weeks ago thinking about the next tattoo when the thing I've been trying to convince myself for weeks landed a little harder: I already have everything I need.
I have Connor on my chest, and in my heart, and I've found him.
I have Maddie in my life, and it's pretty hard not to know where she is!
And I have a miracle baby to complete the trio, a toddler with a genetic disorder so rare it barely has more than 100 identified cases in the world.
And the answer was on my wrists the whole time.
An "h" and a "t".
Because without having a clue about the connection until he was long past 2 years old, our miracle baby is named Hudson Theodore.
--
And things started to make a little more sense that day.
Nothing actually changed.
But I did.
Just a little.
And that's how change happens.
It's a million little moments all combined, and we either slowly lose ourselves or slowly find ourselves.
One moment at a time.
Because life happens one moment at a time. Literally.
And somewhere along the journey I forgot the thing I tattooed on myself so I wouldn't forget.
I forgot to ask for help.
I forgot to give thanks.
The noise was so loud I couldn't hear it.
But the answer was written in ink the whole time.
An "h" and a "t".
--
"I'm falling into memories of you and things we used to do.
Follow me there.
A beautiful somewhere.
A place that I can share with you."
