Reflex

Reflex. It’s a pretty crazy thing, if you think about it. Your body does something or says something without you consciously telling it to. Being the control freak that I am, that’s crazy to me. But it happens, every day. My heart beats, thoughts run across my mind, I breathe in and out. I walk without thinking about it. I talk without thinking about how to make my mouth and tongue move. And apparently, there are also times when reflex takes over in conversation.

As in yesterday, when I was talking to Alex and without thinking almost my first words were, “How are you?” I did not inject any intonation. It was purely reflex. That is what you say when you talk to someone whom you’ve not spoken with in a while. You ask them how they are. That is where it came from. Utter reflex.

It got me to wondering if he’s getting tired of that question yet. I mean, every one hears it probably a dozen times a day in everyday life. But after you’ve suffered a tragedy, after you’ve lost someone very close to you, that phrase of formality tends to take on a sidecar of whole different nuance.

At least it did for me. After I lost my Dad, I got so freaking tired of people asking that. Even when it was completely innocent like it was for me yesterday. I got to a point where I wanted to respond, “How the hell do you think I am?!? My Dad just died!” But instead, in a nod to polite society, I adopted the phrase, “I’m hanging in there.” Which was true. I was, and am, hanging in there. Some days it’s by my fingernails. But I’m hanging in there.

I don’t know what Alex’s day to day life looks like right now, but I do know he’s staying as busy as he possibly can. And I hope through the movement, that he’s bending ears and shouting as he needs to. I’d like to ask him now, not “How are you?” because I’m fairly sure there’s no way I could ever accurately understand how he is. But instead, “Do you have what you need, right now?” I think because need speaks so much more to the core of the issue. How you are in any given moment is such an incredibly hard thing to encapsulate in conversation when it comes to things like this. But addressing need is tangible. It gives both the speaker and the listener something to wrap their minds and hands around. It lends purpose to a moment that might otherwise be overwhelming. It gives direction when you’ve lost which way is up.