The days leading up to Chase’s funeral were a whirlwind. I’m sure I’ll have posts about these days at some point. It’s the days after his memorial where reality really started to set in. It was the reality that time did not stand still, people had to get back to work and my husband Marcus and I were going to be officially alone. The house that had been filled with noise from our son and then of our family and friends, would now be very quiet. Too quiet. Nowadays I can have an hour long conversation with my husband about my twenty-five minute drive to work, but almost four years ago all we could manage was staring at the wall. Deciding that we weren’t ready to be in our house, alone in our new reality, we decided to get away for a few days. We started thinking about where we wanted to go. We were aggressive at first, looking at flights to Hawaii and Mexico. We dialed it down a bit once the scheduling of flight times started to make the idea of an escape sound exhausting. We didn’t need exhausting. We needed to just take off. Get in the car and go. We had a new focus. Marcus could plan the route and I could be in charge of snacks. This was going to be good for us.
We settled on a road trip to S
anta Cruz. It was far enough away, taking a few hours to get there and it was a place we both thought of fondly from childhood visits to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Good. Done. We booked a stay at a hotel right on the beach, walking distance to the Boardwalk. The idea of riding a rollercoaster actually sounded appealing. Even the kind that whip you around so much the chiropractors are practically throwing their business cards at you as soon as you exit the ride. Where else could we sit in a chair and scream uncontrollably without anyone thinking we’d escaped the funny farm. Like Ozzy Osbourne says, we’d be “going off the rails on a crazy train.”
With snacks, maps and coffee in hand, we set off on our adventure. We were bringing it back to when it was just the two of us. We could do this. I attempted to find us a road trip music mix. They really need to make more jams for post-funeral road trips. We arrived at the hotel and got settled in our room. We popped open a bottle of wine and decided we’d have a glass on our balcony and watch the ocean. We sat there for about thirty minutes and listened to the waves and the roller coasters from the Boardwalk. I think it was at that point that we both realized, it didn’t matter how far our road trip took us, our son was still gone. The Boardwalk morphed from a convenient distraction to a hotbed of happy families. Yuck. Majority of our stay turned into room service, movies and more wine.
It wasn’t the Boardwalk’s fault. It was life’s. I don’t regret making the trip, because leaving our house at that particular time felt like a necessity. I am also very pleased that we didn’t pay thousands of dollars to cry on the sandy beaches of Hawaii. I’m sure we’ll make it back to the Boardwalk at some point, but we’re not in a rush to have a do-over anytime soon.
That significant urge to escape doesn’t come around as often anymore. When it does though, we still listen to it. Now that our two rainbows are here, it’s not in the cards to drive a few hours at a moment’s notice, but maybe it’s a family trip to the cemetery to visit Chase, or a date after dinner to get ice cream (eating our feelings is always in the cards). Marcus is the navigator and I’m still in charge of snacks.
5 Essentials to Rediscovering Your Joy After Loss
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