Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas my precious son. This is our 5th Christmas without you. Was it easier? No. Was it different? A new normal? Yes. But just because we do different doesn't mean you are forgotten. For I see you everywhere I go? Every Christmas light I see I see your face and hear your voice when you were a small child seeing them for the first time. The excitement and laughter as you oohed and ahhhed your way through. I see you in every ornament you made in school with your tiny hands. I see you in the little boy holding his daddy's hand at the tubing hill saying over and over "Daddy can we do it again? Daddy can we? Can we?" I see you in every package wrapped and stocking hung. You loved Christmas, you loved giving, you loved getting. I so vividly remember your last Christmas and the thrill as bed time approached and at 23 you made your brothers all sleep in one room so you would wake up together Christmas morn. Your favorite gift out of all we bought, the blinking Christmas cup. I still have that cup. I take it out each Christmas and hold it with my eyes closed remembering the way you drank out of it for weeks. You see you are with us every moment. We pretend we have moved on, we gather together and act like life is fine. But for me son I still miss you so very much. I still look around the room when the family is gathered and know that you are missing. I still start to buy 3 of everything. I still pull your stocking out and cling to it knowing that it will still be empty again this year. I will never be over it. I will never have my heart mended. I will always wake up Christmas morning and know that I still miss you as much as the day you left. But I know that while we suffer through our time on earth that you are celebrating with Christ himself. And while I would wish you back immediately if I could your view is so much better where you are. Rejoice with the King, and hold tight to Nana and Poppa. Someday, we will all be together again and celebrate Christmas as a family. But until that time I miss you. I miss you everyday but a little more tonight, our 5th Christmas without you. Merry Christmas I love you my precious baby boy.

Happy Birthday Traditions

Today before I even open my eyes I know what day it is. My first born's birthday. What a day of celebration. One that use to, even when he became an adult, started with a birthday scavenger hunt. We would wake him up and with long bedhead hair, video as he stumbled half asleep through the clues and hints until he finally found his birthday present. When I even suggested, at his 21st birthday, that we might not have this scavenger hunt he balked with all his might. Traditions. That is what knits a family tightly together. Traditions. Songs that stick in our head from days when we rocked our children to sleep, You Are My Sunshine, to nightly rituals of texting, Night, love you. These traditions bring comfort that life is right and no matter what else happens in the world our family is united and tied to each other. Comfort. Knowing that no matter how the world treats you and turns upside down you can always come home to family and life will be the same. My kids thrive on tradition. But when a child, your child, their brother, dies traditions change. The world is no longer spinning like it once did. For people trenched in tradition, uncertainty abounds around every corner. How does life go on? How do you have holidays? Birthdays? Family dinners? Even something as simple as going to a restaurant and saying "seating for 4 not 5." I balked at changing tradition so I ran. First Christmas, I made the entire family, not just the four of us but all of Bart's family go on a cruise. Why? I could not fathom the idea of waking up Christmas morning and their only being 2 Santa Claus piles. So I ran and took others with me. I never fixed certain meals because they were too painful to make. I changed the seating, the numbers, added more, the pictures. But finally you have to stop. The third Christmas my middle child said, no more. I want to have Christmas at home. I want to create new traditions. So we did. And somehow this tradition true family let go. We have Christmas and the other holidays at home. Home, where once again we are steeped in new traditions. The bedrooms are changed, new pictures are made. New memories are formed and the old start to fade away. But on this morning, my son's 27th birthday, some traditions are just too hard to forget. I lay in bed and dream of happier days when I would wake that tousled head young man who was taller than me and play out the tradition of birthday scavenger hunt. As the tears trickle down, I pray that somehow God let him have his tradition. That he hugged him tight and told him his momma loves and misses him so much and that no matter how much life changes I will cling to my memories of traditions.

There must be a compromise

As I encounter more and more parents whose children have died and watch the harsh painful reality of anguish set in I hear myself telling them to have hope. That right now the pain is so unbearable, unfathomable but it will get better with time. I share with them my pain and how today I stand in front of them to show how they will survive, not without horrible scars, but they will survive. I listen to myself and totally believe what I am saying. It is the what I am not saying that is too scarring to share. Yes, to the public eye I look as if I have moved on. I look as if I am coping. And I am. But what I don't share is it looks that way because I have a guarded heart. As long as I keep a very tight guard on my heart and don't "go there" then I live my quiet little life and seem to be healing. I have to keep that guard on or I won't survive. The intense pain of losing a child would completely stop my heart from beating. The truth is even with the joy and hope I have that I will one day see my son again if I let that guard completely down the pain is still as fresh and blood raw as the day I heard those words, your son is dead. So I keep a constant vigil on my heart. Occasionally, a day like today out of nowhere the guard slips a little and I find myself at his grave silently sobbing as I hear those words resounding in my head. I allow myself time to grieve. I allow myself to visit this point of hell. The reality that my son is truly dead and his body is lying in that cold dark earth comes completely over me and I grieve as only a parent can. At that moment nothing else exist. Slowly I pull myself together, wipe the tears from my eyes and stand up. I know I have to put the guard back in place. Even tighter this time so I can survive. I must survive. I must keeping on living. The hitch is the tighter the guard the less happiness can seep in. Yes, I have joy and hope but where is the true happiness of living life in the innocence that I had before my child died? The worst experience possible has happened so every moment in life is tempered with knowing that happiness is so fleeting. Every moment is dated before or after. Every happy moment is compared to what true happiness was before. Yes, survival means keeping that place closed off but surely there has to be a compromise.

A dark frozen day.

I went to a child's funeral today. A twenty five year old child but a child nonetheless. I walk in, see the casket and sit down. I sit down and I feel nothing. Five days ago I walked into the parents' house. I entered their home and quickly saw the father's look. The look in his eyes that showed the hurt that comes from the unthinkable happening. A child dying way too early in life. I quickly adverted my eyes and began unloading the food I brought. I did not want to see those eyes, relive the thoughts, feel the pain that accompanies those eyes. I advert my eyes and say the nice things, I am so sorry, my heart breaks, time heals, God will see you through. But I feel nothing. I steel myself to keep my eyes adverted. If I don't and I look deep enough and begin to feel the pain I know I will begin to shout out the truth to these innocent people who right now are so numb. I will shout out the truth that time does not heal and the pain will never get easier because when I see their eyes I remember what is behind my frozen soul. What I steel myself against every day every moment so as not to lose control. I don't want to empathize because that would be to share that pain. I have been to that dark dark place. I don't want to go there again. So I shield myself from those eyes and when I lie in bed in the middle of the nights and I see the haunting image before me I turn the volume up on the tv and play a few more games on my phone. I drown the thoughts and images out by mindless noise and sights. Anything to not go to the place that my friends are now visiting. The reality of a child dying. A child being no more. The fear of how to go on. So instead some day I will share the hope to all this is to freeze the feelings. Do not visit there, do not allow anything to splinter the tiniest hole in your heart so that all the feelings come pouring out once again. Shield that heart from feeling and the pain stays at bay. No feeling no pain but also no love. The fear of the pain wins out. And I sit myself down in the pew with my muscles as tight bands so as to cut off the blood pumping from my heart to keep it all inside. And when the time comes to walk down that aisle and see the child inside the box where she lies the lack of blood keeps me frozen solid so I can walk and breathe and never feel a thing. The cold from the outdoors hitting my face like a slap to the chest is the only thing that brings me back to realize I am alive and once again the blood starts to flow. A child died and lives will never be the same. Yes, so very dark but some days are darker than others.

A silent tear

Today was a beautiful day and all seemed right with the world. I sat outside in the sunshine which feels so foreign after days of winds so cold they chill the very bones. While warming with the rays penetrating my skin deep below the surface and the wind lightly blowing my hair I studied the Word of God. Reading and rereading searching and learning old stories but new truths. Then out of nowhere a tear slipped down my face. I quietly brushed it away and wondered from where it came. The birds were singing, the dog nipping at my polished toes while communing with God on a very personal level another tear slipped silently down my face. Soon another followed and another. What seemed like a perfect Sunday afternoon soon let loose to tears streaming down my face. I felt the fear and anxiety reaching up my throat to remind me just how lonely I was. As I sat and silently cried I grieved for my momma and my son. The rest of the world continued on but for me the day grew grayer, the cold returned and the sun quit shining. And then they stopped. I picked my Bible back up and continued studying. The moment gone, the pain lingering but the recognition that always right below the surface that sadness lives. I reign it in but when I least expect it a silent tear slips down my face.