Me vs. the Fitted Sheet | Diary of a Grieving Mother

Who won? I still don't know...

It's after midnight.

I'm sitting at my computer when I should be asleep, if that tells you how well my sleep pattern is working.

Normally I fall asleep watching a show at night. Trust me, that's the preferable method. Experts say that's the worst way to fall asleep, but I'd like to counter that with this:

For some of us, it's better not to be thinking while trying to fall asleep.

Even under the best of circumstances, my brain doesn't shut off.

Never has.

Not sure why.

But no.

Sadly...

That wasn't tonight's scenario.

Have you ever been lying there, listening to your dog snoring, then eventually your husband snoring, and they're just slightly out of sync?

So you roll over.

Then again.

Move your pillow.

Sniff.

Cough.

Anything to get one of them to falter in their breathing just enough that they'll somehow end up on the same snore wavelength.

Does that not create this inner rage that makes you feel like, within the next five minutes, you might resort to smothering one of them with a pillow?

Okay.

Maybe that's just me.

Then you roll over one more time and feel that inevitable tug...

Snap.

The corner of the fitted sheet pops off the mattress.

Immediately you think, "Nope."

"I'm way too close to falling asleep." (Even though you're absolutely not.)

There is no chance you're getting out of bed to wrestle that fitted sheet back onto the mattress.

Except...

You also know that if you somehow manage to fall asleep, eventually that elastic corner is going to wrap itself around your elbow or hand and wake you up anyway while you're trying to untangle yourself from the vindictive cotton.

So after several more minutes of pretending you're about to fall asleep, you finally decide to fix it.

Do you get out of bed?

Of course not.

You attempt to stretch the sheet back over the mattress while still lying down.

Which means it only reaches halfway.

Now you're performing some sort of weird worm-like maneuver, trying to pull the sheet from underneath yourself while simultaneously convincing yourself this is somehow less work than simply standing up.

It isn't.

Three turns from now it'll pop off again anyway.

So...

You give up.

You firmly tell yourself,

"You're going to sleep now."

Only, as I'm lying there I start thinking, "I should write this down."

Because if you really think about it, the things that keep your brain spinning at night are completely absurd.

Most of them, anyway.

Then there are the conversations you replay over and over.

The moments you wish you'd handled differently. Like eating the entire bag of chips and salsa, completely ignoring your vow to stay strong.

Then your neck starts hurting.

So you roll over, twisting your shirt in the process until it's trying to strangle you.

Once you're settled again, you notice how cold your arm is outside the blanket.

It feels like Iceland.

So you pull it underneath the covers.

Thirty seconds later your entire body feels like a volcano erupted somewhere behind your ribs.

You could be dropped into a bathtub full of ice and probably wouldn't even notice.

The ice wouldn't melt.

It would just skip straight to vapor.

That's what's known as a hot flash.

My personal theory is that a man came up with the name.

Because if it had been a woman—

The words lava and forever would've been somewhere in the title.

When you hear the word "flash," you think camera.

The light comes on.

Then it's gone.

When lava erupts from the middle of your body and spreads through your veins like a California wildfire during a drought...

It lingers.

Think about counting to sixty.

One minute doesn't sound very long until you're counting every second.

Now multiply that by five.

Yeah.

Forever.

I used to joke that hot flashes kept me thin because they happened all the time.

It was like living inside a sauna a hundred times a day.

Then I turned forty.

Apparently your age decides when hot flashes alone aren't enough.

Now, if I want to keep from gaining weight, I actually have to exercise.

Like...

In a gym.

So anyway.

Night sweats are also a thing. A side hustle for the hot flash.

I stick one leg out from under the blanket to cool off.

Snap.

There goes the fitted sheet again.

It's over.

I'm done.

I'm up.

I angrily stand up, yank the sheet over the corner and head to the living room with Chewie in tow.

Now I'm on the couch watching the last three episodes of Prodigal Son on Netflix.

Those were supposed to be tomorrow night's fall-asleep shows.

I figured maybe I'd drift off on the couch watching it instead.

Nope.

So I turn off the TV and try to fall asleep there.

Only I forgot my pillow.

And apparently couch pillows are made out of sandpaper.

LORD!

COME ON!

"Seriously mom, go to sleep!"

I wake up Chewie, and back to bed we go.

All the while, there's one thought I'm trying to keep buried in the back of my mind. I know if I let it come into focus, that's it.

I'll never fall asleep.

Because there's one thought I can't outrun.

It's Aidan.

Ninety-nine percent of my insomnia nights happen because thoughts of him pinball through my mind.

His life.

The hospital.

The future we'll never see.

Tonight I tried something new.

I thought about everything else I possibly could.

The sheet.

The hot flashes.

The snoring.

The couch.

Anything.

It didn't matter.

He was still there.

Quietly waiting in the background.

Even sitting on the couch, I caught myself thinking,

"I'm a terrible mother for trying not to think about Aidan."

But if I start crying—

It'll take me all night to stop.

My almost final thought before falling asleep:

Did I fix that fitted sheet all the way?

SNAP!

And, I'm up.

—Mary-Jo

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From the pages of Diary of a Grieving Mother