One day...

Another life changing day for a momma and dad. My cousin called to say a friend's 22 year old son had died the night before from an accidental drug overdose. How many will it take? How many senseless deaths before we wake up and realize the dangers of drugs? Maybe it is not getting worse I just notice it more now. Maybe every time I read an obituary for a young person my heart wonders if they died the same senseless death. Maybe I still cringe whenever I hear an ambulance wondering whose life will be changed by that one phone call. So in hearing this news I looked back over my pages, my rants, my cries for help, my seeking answers and wondered if it truly has gotten any better. Does a mother ever recover from this type of devastation? I noticed a reoccurring word in my writings, breathe. Breathe. Why was that so important then and now? Breathing is a involuntary action of your body. Even if you pass out and have no control of your functions your body automatically will continue breathing. Your heart will automatically keep beating. So why was I so concerned with continuing breathing? The pain is so great in the loss of a child that even involuntary functions of your body do not want to continue. I remember walking down that hall and seeing the chaplain. Immediately, my blood pressure dropped me to my knees. My heart contracted so hard I felt like I was dying and my ability to breathe was non existent. My body was in shock. It was shutting down and my brain was unable to signal it to keep working because the news that my son was dead short circuited all pathways. You are teetering back and forth between trying to grasp for air and giving in to the urge to die. To close your eyes and not fight. To cease breathing, to cease living all in that moment. But slowly, someone pulls you back. That day in the hallway of the hospital it was the chaplain who picked me up and made my body move, made my heart keep beating and my breath to gasp out painfully. Later when time and time again when my body screamed out enough, no more pain, quit breathing, heart quit beating Bart would pull me back. He would remind me to breathe. To move, to will my heart to keep beating even though it was broken to pieces. Even today when I go to that place of pain I feel my heart constrict and not want to release. I will sit for seconds on end not breathing making my self slowly take a breath. I will myself to keep functioning keep breathing and heart beating because even though the pain is still so intense I see hope. No the pieces of my heart will never fit neatly back together. No, I will never cease to have my son at the foremost of my thoughts. And yes, I will still fall apart, and yes, I will still have to be reminded to breathe. But I have hope that one day it will get a little easier. One day one day.