A whole year.

IT has been one full year since our Rye guy passed away.  We have no more answers now than we did then and we are still struggling to make sense of the universe and why it would choose us and ours.

This grief comes in waves – I had been told that it would – sometimes for no apparent reason at all it washes over you.  Sometimes it is soft and gentle like the surf lapping at your beach chair, but sometimes it just beats you into the surf and tears your swimsuit off leaving you crying and naked and wet with your breath stuck in your chest and the pain in your heart worse than ever. 

Some days I get through the day one minute at a time.  Sometimes it is one hour at a time.  Sometimes I don’t make it through the day and I sit on the couch or on the bed and I stare at the door or the ceiling or the television that I am not actually watching.  Sometimes I watch too much television.

It helps to stay busy, and I do that well, but sometimes I just run out of energy and it is all I can do to get up and go to the bathroom without melting into a heap on the floor.

My “good thing” at a work meeting the other day was that I got out of bed and came to work.  I would have worn my pajama pants except that they didn’t have pockets and I have to have pockets during the day.  It’s a personal rule.  Im sure my co-workers were glad that I have that rule!

Life goes on and so do we, my family and all the people in it are changed now though.  Every two steps forward and then it seems something will happen and we go back to square one.  Sometimes it is only a step back, but sometimes it feels like starting over.  The death of another person whether we know them or not sparks all sorts of panic and setbacks.  News that another mother met the child that got her childs heart, or eyes, or lungs begins the pain anew.  She gets to hear her childs heart beat again, to look into his eyes or to hear him breathe.  I am happy for her and terribly jealous and sad at the same time.

My hope and my heart keep thinking that once we get through this horrible first year, that everything will start to feel better or at least not hurt so much, so often.  My head knows that it won’t help to just get through this year, the next year will just begin.

There is also the ongoing issue of “Does what I do matter?”  Every day when we get up we have to find a reason to get out of bed, and then we have to convince ourselves that what we do matters, and that if we keep going we will keep finding reasons to go on.  Some days we cannot find that reason to get out of bed or if we do we cant focus on anything enough to actually get anything done.  Some days we cannot find anything that matters enough to focus on.  It just doesn’t matter.

Then there is the insomnia.  A desperate need and desire to sleep but a complete inability to do so, we have tried everything, melatonin, Simply Sleep, working until we can’t move anymore, to no avail.   Alcohol does not help.  Nothing helps – so I get up and get some things done – or I try to get some things done.  Between the grief fog, lack of sleep and the thoughts of my son it all gets jumbled into a tattered mess that cannot be sorted out and does not allow me to focus for more than 10 minutes at a time.

Some have asked me to help them understand what it is that I go through each day since my son passed but I cannot and I will not, for to make them understand I will have to make them endure death by 1000 cuts, only you don’t die you wake each day and start again fresh and raw and with that piece of your soul missing.  You cannot explain how it feels.  It feels like you are digging a ditch on a beach with your forehead through sand that the waves fill in as soon as you pass through it.  You feel like you should be able to lift your head and see all the beauty around you on that beach which would be so lovely.  But all you can do is push sand with your forehead.  Foggy and hurting and unwilling to have anyone else feel that way.

I do not want to be touched or hugged even though I know you need to do that – I feel fragile and breakable and I don’t like that feeling – the more you hug me the worse it gets as though I am made of glass.

Some days even talking out loud hurts.  Of course, those are milestone days when 18,000 people want to check on us – and we do appreciate that and we know that you love us and that feels good to have that support and feel that love.  We just don’t want to or can’t talk that day or that moment.

Loud noises are not ok and neither are crowds of people pressing and asking and wondering with all the questions in their eyes.  Even though at one time I was the loud one!  They wonder if we are ok and we have to say yes – no matter what we are feeling because to not say we are would be to hurt the person asking and then they try to “fix” something that cannot be fixed.

I once told a friend that in order to fix what was broken we would have to have our son back.  She said “well then it would be the Zombie Apocolypse – and who wants that for their kid!”  I had not thought of Zombie Ill be honest – just raise up him the way that other guys son got raised and he was fine for years after that – you know who Im talking about. 

I looked  into the mirror yesterday (something I rarely do), the one year anniversary of his memorial and realized that he had my exact eyes.  When I look in the mirror I see my sons eyes staring me  back.

Apparently all loss mothers feel this way – at least all of the ones I have talked to do.  They say it never goes away.  17 years, 22 years, there will always be some part of you pushing sand.

We will survive – the same way that other families have survived this, from day to day and year to year.  Yoga and meditation will help and maybe some therapy too.  We will find joy again in some of the things that we did before and find ways to find it in new things that we do.  We will love and smother our other child until he wants to scream at us to stop treating him like a baby – “I’m gwown”!  We will laugh when he acts just like his big brother did and we will not let him get away with some of the things that his brother did!  We will travel places and say “Rye would have loved this” and eventually we will go back to the Highland Games and to the Fair again and it will be fun for us – not something we are getting over with so that we can get that first time out of the way on our own terms.

We should get to do just “whatever the F*&K we want to do” – I was told that at the beginning of this journey, but life doesn’t work that way.  When one of us is doing good it seems the other is not doing so good.  All of us doing good on the same day is a very rare occurrence and it seems that we never get to be together on those days for long – running in different directions taking care of the things that need taken care of while we are up to it!

So if you should see us and ask how we are doing – let “fine” or “ok” be the answer.  That is the best we can do without letting some of our hurt come out like the vicious demon that it is and get all over you and yours.  Let it be.  Blessed Be as we start on the second year of the journey.