Early Morning Hours

It is mornings like this, when I cannot sleep that I think of you most.  I remember how I would hold you and rock you in your room and sing the songs from your CD.  Unfortunately, your brothers accidentally broke the CD and the memories will be just that and I can no longer hear it playing in my head just like I cannot hear your cry or laugh anymore.  The very thought of this just kills me inside.  It makes you seem even farther away than anyone will ever know.  So often I am told to suck it up and be strong but the moments like these I find it hard to do that and tears roll down my face as my heart aches a pain like no other. 

No one ever told me my life would be so hard.  There is nothing that can ever prepare you to watch your child die and have to survive and live the rest of your life with that image but even worse, with empty arms and a heart that once was full of joy that is turned to pain in an instant.  Other people mean well but they don't truly understand and often the things they say hurt more and make it even harder to cope with.  I try to not let them get to me but often times I am barely holding on and don't have energy to give to ignore what they are saying and it takes all I have not to scream and cry.  I want to stomp my feet and cry and be allowed to curl up in a ball and sob uncontrollably for hours sometimes.  This is so unfair and I want out of this nightmare but unfortunately this is my reality and I have to somehow get through all the pain to survive and live again.

I know you wouldn't want this for me but I also know you would understand how much I love you and that now you are gone, this is the only way I can express my love for you.  I remember your Aunt Tara onetime hugging a cabbage patch doll so tight that its head came off.  She had so much love for one baby doll and had to show it and it was so great that the doll came apart...and yet that is only the fraction of a mothers love for her child.  How do you harness that type of love and shove it down into one person for the rest of their life?  There is no making it any better, there is no looking on the bright side, and there is no way to explain it to those who have not suffered the same loss.  They all mean well and think they do know but they don't and I can say that because I was once in their shoes and didn't really know what it was like to loose a child...I could empathize but sympathy was a whole other ball game and what I imagined it as is nothing at all like what it is like.  I too was wrong in my thinking and feel for those who I had encountered prior to this and thought that I could understand when I had not been in their shoes.  Now, a lot of their actions make sense to me when before they didn't...there is no sense when it comes to the death of your child.

I know you are in heaven and that I will see you again but for now that doesn't stop the hurt.  If this is a fraction of what God felt for Jesus, I feel for him and it makes me love him even more for his sacrifice and love for us.  When no one else understands and I have to listen to incessant "words of wisdom" from others, it is God often times that I turn to because He knows my pain.  So often I think of Mary and my heart just breaks for her too, knowing she had to suffer this on an earthly level and just trust in God's will for her, her son, and her own life.  This is no easy task and there are moments when you cannot roll up into a ball that in your mind you do that and God is there to comfort you like no one else can.  It is mornings like this that I sit here and think of these things because these are the times that I miss you the most.  I know each day is one closer to you and ending this pain and often times I have to remind myself of that because so often the future just looks so bleak without you in my life and this never ending pain in my heart.  Life for me has always been hard but nothing compares to this and I pray all the time for God to bring a greater peace to my heart each day...I'm not sure if it is working but I am surviving and taking baby steps.  For now I will just have to pray to God to hug and kiss you for me and ask Mary to please rock you and sing to you for me every now and then until I can be there with you again one day.  I love you so much my little monkey!

  

Baby Steps

I have to say this whole grief process is full of baby steps.  Today was a very big baby step and I didn't even anticipate it at all.  I sang at the funeral for the man at our church who returned to heaven.  For the first time I put all my faith that God would lead me and the music would be just the way it was suppose to rather than worry like I usually do.  It went well and I didn't fumble and even got rid of the anxiety in my voice.  I was glad that I could be part of his service and lend the gift God gave me to celebrate his life.  Since we were touched by this couple I was able to get my parents to watch the kids and spent the day with the family at the cemetery and reception following.

Our church has a tradition during funerals to have the family partake in the burial.  I know Hugh and I were taken back by this and were not prepared to have to bury our son ourselves.  When the deacon handed me George's urn to place his ashes in the resting place at our memorial garden, I was just baffled and felt I could not dump my son's ashes in this hole.  With everyone watching, I knew I had no real choice and I placed my son in the ground and tears just ran down my face.  Hugh placed the first shovel full of dirt into the hole and everyone who wanted to added to it, myself included as we put him in his resting place.  It was hard to do but I am so thankful that we did this and they did not really tell us ahead of time because I would have fought them on it but I really had to do it.  I needed to walk my son home to heaven as much as possible. 

Today was the first service that I have been to where I went to the grave sight and went through this whole process all over again.  My heart just broke thinking of George's service as I watched Charlies wife took that same step that we did when she took a shovel of dirt and placed it on Charlies urn and final resting place.  The family all came up and tears just streamed down my face remembering that day just a few years ago when we had to do this.  Thankfully Marsha, another wonderful member of the church who is Gabrielle's church Godmother and who I just adore, was there and held my hand knowing how hard it was for me to be there.  At first we stood back and were not going to do the shoveling but once the family was done there was still quite a bit of dirt that still needed to be placed so we went up and Marsha did it first and turned to see if I wanted to.  I hesitated at first but knew it was something I had to do, and with all I had in my heart I placed the dirt in his grave and helped to finish his burial. 

I do not know if Charlie was placed in our lives to just help me through this milestone but I do have to say, even in his death Charlie changed my life for the better.  There is still that deep rooted pain but each of these baby steps helps me to get closer to that place I need to be.  Grief is full of good and bad days or good and bad moments.  You can't run from it and have to face it head on no matter how much you don't want to.  I know all things happen for a reason but there are times when none of it makes any sense.  Faith is the only thing you have to lean on at times.  Nothing can ever ease the pain in my heart for the loss of my son but my children that are here still teach my heart to smile through the pain.  Just when I think I cannot take anymore ache, one of them comes and hugs me or does something to make me smile or it warms my heart.  These past few years have just been so very hard...I know what life is all about and what is important but suffering so much loss, it becomes overwhelming at times.  I have to trust in God and his plan for our lives but when it makes no sense and takes so long without any answers or light at the end of the tunnel it becomes hard to keep faith that it will all turn out ok.

Please keep the family of Charlie in your prayers as they begin their walk down this path.  It is so hard to do, and I know that often times the elderly are left to themselves especially after a spouse has died.  I pray for them to be there for one another and that this be as gentle on them as possible. 

Missing You

I've been missing you a lot today...well yesterday and today.  Last night I actually took your siblings to visit daddy at work and walk the mall because my heart was just breaking.  I really have been trying to look on the positive side of things but the past two days I have been overwhelmed and can't seem to do that.  Looking back over the past few years, our family has just had to endure so much and I just can't find the fairness of it or how this is going to be a good thing for us but I am having to trust in my faith.  This is so hard to do, knowing how I love you and this pain in my heart is so great.  I looked back on pictures of you and of your little sister and wow, you guys looked so much alike.  Never did I think I would be living a life like this, one full of so much heartache.

People tell me to look at things differently but there are only so many days you can do that and be strong and they don't get it.  I've been told to be strong for your siblings and daddy or that you wouldn't want to see me like this but I can't help it.  Hearing this only makes me feel more guilty and sad.  Tears well up now as I write this thinking of how I shouldn't be doing this and how instead I should be watching you grow up.  Instead of hearing you laugh and giggle, all I hear are the drops of my own tears or of my muffled cries into a pillow so no one will hear.  I am a mom who has lost part of herself and watched her child die before her eyes, a mom who has watched her husband struggle to make ends meet and work tirelessly to make very little pay for so much work and feel like a failure, a mom who feels she has let her children down by loosing their home and not being able to save you.  We have faced so much and lost so much that it becomes overwhelming.  People say that we should do this or that but they have not walked our shoes and don't really understand how we feel.

I hope heaven is all that they say it is because I know that the time for you will fly until we are together again.  For me however, there are days where it seems like an eternity to just make it through one single minute here without you.  The one thing I think of that does make me smile inside is that from the day I get to heaven, I get to spend the rest of eternity with you.  Part of me hopes I will get to hold you again and know the sort of love I have for you here when I get to heaven, but I am not sure if you are growing up or staying the same age.  No matter what is happening here, I am always thinking of you and miss you no matter the front I have to put on for everyone else.