I am officially started on my second dose of 3 Paxlovid horse pills this morning. Haven’t seen much improvement yet, but hoping by sundown tonight I’ll be a new woman. Or at least some semblance of the old, neurotic but not virus-ridden one.
I think it was really good for us to travel, but hard in some respects, mentally more than anything else. I couldn’t help sometimes feeling like the Nameless Second Mrs. de Winter and Max de Winter shuffling through the hotels of Europe in their fog of angst after Rebecca and Mrs. Danvers burn down Manderly. Too much? Yeah. We don’t drink or play tennis.
One of the hardest things for me was how terrifying it was to be separated from Max, in a crowd, or not see him in an art gallery, or just in a strange place or something. It felt frightening not to know where he was.
When we arrived in Edinburgh, we stayed in a hotel that used to be a maternity hospital in the 19th century. “Think of all the women groaning in pain in this room,” I said when we checked into the room. “Think of all the happy mothers snuggling with their babies,” said Max.
That night I had an intense dream of Sarah, one of the first I have had. I was getting her ready for the day and braiding her hair into two braids the way she liked in the last couple of years of her life. Sarah said to me “You should love again.”
Of course, there are other people besides Sarah that I love, but don’t know if I will love again so completely, so unreservedly, and so securely as I did with my child. That bond, especially with a special needs child, is so intense and unwavering.
Later I told Max about the dream and he reminded me that Sarah was often very impatient about have her hair “done” and hated hairbrushing. He interpreted her dream comment as being peevish, more in line with “Not so much love! Find someone else to love on, Mom! I want to watch YouTube” That made me laugh because it did sound like Sarah.
The First Year Without Sarah 