I got up early this morning to drive to work, to teach a class at the indoor rowing studio where I'm a certified instructor. As I was leaving at 10 'til 7, there was a mom walking her little kids in the cold and dark to the bus stop where the neighborhood entrance intersects the main road.
Rader never rode the bus; it wasn't an option for the schools he attended. And we didn't have to get going that early, either. Montessori started at 8:30; so did middle school. High school started at 8:45. But still I felt a twinge as I saw what that mom was doing for her kids, what any mom would do, a habit born of love. And Rader filled my mind as I drove on to the gym.
My new-to-me car, which I got a year before Rader died, has seat warmers — I had them on today, since the outside temperature was in the 40s. He never liked to admit he was cold (and wore shorts most days of the year unless I insisted he put on long pants), but he loved the seat warmer. I even bought him a heated blanket that plugged in to the car outlet, and he snuggled up under that every cold school day of his last winter. I loved that I could care for him in that way, that I could meet a need he wouldn't admit he had.
I don't keep that blanket in the car anymore. Who would use it? My husband has his own car. Our surviving child is off at college. Most of the time, I'm alone there now.
After teaching my class, I went to the grocery store to buy the rest of my Thanksgiving provisions. It's been 17 months since Rader died, and grocery shopping doesn't envelop me in a dark fog anymore. At first, it was so hard to walk past the items I would have bought for him: the Nilla Wafers and the turkey pepperoni and the chocolate pudding. It felt like they shouted, accusingly: "You don't need me anymore!" But each time I've been there since has dulled the knife a little. Grocery shopping is back to being an ordinary chore, just a habit.
Finished with rowing and shopping, I sit in this room, at this computer, the way he did every day with most of his free time. I'm here every day now, too: writing, working on the website for the foundation we started in his name, finding and posting suicide prevention and mental health and grief support resources on our social media. Except on Mondays, when I post something about Mario, Rader's favorite video game character. Mario Mondays are great. I've made Mario Monday a habit.
I took this job, pursued certification as an indoor rowing instructor, because I didn't have to drive Rader to school anymore. I started thinking about it months before he died, six days short of his 16th birthday. He would be getting his license and driving himself to school. What was I going to do with myself in the mornings when, after 14 years, I wasn't responsible for taking anyone anywhere anymore? After he was gone, it took me almost a year to set my plan in motion. I attended the certification workshop in May and taught my first class the week of his death date in June. I gave an impassioned off-the-cuff speech to my rowers on World Suicide Prevention Day, September 10, urging them to #BeThe1To ASK, if they were concerned about someone they knew. I wrote a poem about Rader and rowing during poem-a-day National Poetry Month in April, and an essay in August about how losing him drove me to learn to teach. I submitted both pieces with my packet of certification requirements in the middle of September. The master instructor who informed me a couple weeks later that I was successful in my application mentioned how my poem resonated with her.
Once you've learned the basics of the stroke, the indoor rowing machine is all habit, muscle memory. One of my roles as an instructor is to provide visual and verbal cues to my rowers to pay attention to aspects of their form that tend to degrade when they're tired or unfocused. I find the same thing is true for me in everyday life. The good I want to do starts to break down when I'm distracted or depleted. It helps to know I'm surrounded by a community of people who remind me to literally and figuratively sit up tall, relax my shoulders, and breathe deep.