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These last few days my usual emotional repertoire since August 18 of guilt, depression, angst, and constant tearfulness seems different. A couple of nights ago, I woke up from a dream screaming. I remember that someone was trying to steal the new car I bought in place of our wheelchair van, and leave me three strange children instead. I was very irate in the dream and it was one of those dreams where you can’t speak and are desperately trying. Max said I woke him up screaming “That’s my f*cking daughter!” The dream scared me. There was a lot of anger in it.

It scares me to admit that I feel angry with Sarah but it seems like the last few days I have been. Today I picked up my phone and saw her picture and I thought “Can’t you leave me alone for a little while?” It shocked me and I felt terrible, as if I had actually said that to her in real life, something we would never have done. Sarah wasn’t capable of generating her own activities and amusements or going off and playing by herself in the backyard or something. Considering how dependent she was, her amicable, easygoing personality was definitely a plus. She didn’t tantrum or shriek; she wasn’t physically capable of a real meltdown. She had a pout that she put on if she didn’t get her own way that was more adorable and funny than anything else. And she was persistent if she wanted something; she would just keep asking, with a smile, usually until we gave in.

We tried to structure her day around the things we knew she liked to do and create a routine for her, and of course she was in school every day too. COVID was a hard period, but my husband retired and went to Eighth Grade every day on Zoom with Sarah to make sure she learned something and had support.

I can’t say Sarah ever made me angry when she was alive. I remember once when she was about a year old she was sitting in her Bumbo seat near me and she kept pulling on the cord of the mouse when I was trying to type something and I was irritated, but Max came and took her away and found her something to play with. Another time comes to mind when Sarah was almost five and we were all lying on the floor together posing for a holiday card which a friend was photographing, and Sarah shrieked really loudly with delight in Max’s ear and he said “Ouch, Sarah, that hurt” and she cried and cried, she really felt reprimanded.

Max has expressed a lot of anger since Sarah’s death, but more of an inchoate kind of anger: at the world, at his “higher power,” at himself because he feels he slept too deeply somehow and should have heard some sort of struggle that night, or Sarah crying out for him (which is nonsense, I think). I don’t think he’s feeling any anger with her. Maybe I’ll ask him when he wakes up.