Days Without End

There is no one, no matter how close they are to you, no matter how well they think they know you, there is no one who will really understand your sorrow unless they have that same sorrow. Even then, they can only judge your pain by the example of their own. If they have never experienced your type of grief, they have no scale to measure by. None. If you have never tasted chocolate, you cannot tell someone what the texture, the feel, the sense of that chocolate is. I still get angry when someone who has not lost a child tries to tell me what I should or should not be doing in the wake of that horror. We stumble along this path and find anything and everything we possibly can to help us accept and understand the loss of our child. When someone tells us we are doing it wrong, they have crossed a line for their words only make us feel more lost, more of a failure then we already do. Each of us will do it different from the other, that is the way grief is. There is no right or wrong, there is only us, trying to find our way.

We learn to hide the greatest part of our grief though the ravages are stamped on our faces, our souls so anyone who cares to see, can read it. No one wants to for it is too much for one who has not lost a child to grasp the true horror. It is just as well for we know how mind numbing it is to be the walking dead. We know how, in the beginning, all we wanted was to lie down and die with our child. How the colors bled from the world and the universe turned upside down. How we became deaf and blind, lost and alone. How we have had to claw our way back to the world, one baby step at a time over mine fields laid by grief and set off by family, friends. Some with good intentions, some, no, not so much. There will always be someone who wants to kick you when your down. But still, we fight and struggle to survive. We don't know why we fight so hard, but we do.

We have become Alien to the world we knew. We feel it, we know it. I think that is why we gravitate to ones who are like ourselves. That is why we need others who are like us. We speak fewer words to them and they understand in silence without the need to 'fix' us. Death is not fixable. We learn, with the help of ones before us, to live with the unimaginable, the loss of our child. That does not mean that we cast ourselves away from the normal populace it just means we are more comfortable with ones who do not see us with critical eyes. There are ones who, though they have not lost a child, have the wisdom and compassion to accept us as we are now. They are not many but I have met a few and am grateful for them, more grateful than I can express.

In time, we learn how to incorporate our loss into the our lives. Oh yes, the tears will still fall, but they fall differently. The sharp edges will dull a little, all depending on each individual. As far as 'getting over' our loss? Really? Do you remember hearing of someone who had lost a child, what people said? How it changed the person? They were never the same? Maybe for the better, maybe not but 'changed.' I find that I do not accept the worlds idea of getting over loss, moving on, blah, blah, blah. If someone has done that, lost a child and 'got over it,' please share that amazing road so others can try the same path. What I do know is, we learn to hide our sorrow and 'allow' others to think we are okay. Yes, we are okay, but not in the way one may think.

Here is what I have done to learn to live without my son. I learned to breath again. I quite allowing others to make demands on me. I became selfish with myself and it felt right. I stood back and decided what was truly important and started to work on those things. We have a tendency to try to work on everything at once and that is too much for us. It is a time where we need to go slow for grief is a slow process once it is in our life. It has no timetable and no guidelines. I started out doing what felt right. Eventually, I force myself to do some things, but not in the beginning, not when the rawness was so absolute. The only way to move forward is to take that step, only you can take it, no one else can do it for you. It's okay to fall back many steps, it's okay to fall down, keep taking that one step forward.

I will never be able to express how deeply, how completely Tim's loss is. That word or words, does not exist. That sentence has never been written. There are bad days. There are okay days. Then there are just days without end. Breath...... 'Forever Mom.'