Tonight I Want To Cry

Death is a thief. A black masked, sneaky, insensitive thief. Uninvited, it helps itself to your future plans, your finances, your control over emotion and rational thought and most importantly, takes away the one you love most. And, if given the chance, it robs you of all happiness.

I remember asking my partner Jim after Tristan died…”will I ever know what happiness feels like again?” He assured me that I would indeed find things to be happy about but in my heart I already felt the answer to be a resounding “no.” Who would want to be happy after their child died? Their ONLY child. Certainly not me.

And that is how I’ve felt for most of the 283 days since Tristan died. The sadness, the loneliness, the emptiness and more than anything, a sense of hopelessness. And, it is in this space that you begin to question your worth and purpose on this big rubber ball. Thinking you have no purpose leads to thinking about why you are even sticking around. Dark, ugly, shadowy thoughts. I judge no one for deciding the journey is too much because it takes one walking a mile in those shoes to understand the power and pull of devastating loss.

And it was in this space that I realized I needed to do something.

If I’ve learned anything in my 47 years stomping around on this planet, it is that happiness is a choice. I’ve seen people who have the world by the tail – money, family, material possessions – and yet, they languish in misery. And I’ve seen people who have been kicked around by life manage to exude joy from every pore of their being. Happiness is a choice. It is a deliberate, conscious effort to see the positive in spite of whatever is going on in your life and to live with intention, purpose and joy. This doesn’t mean that the optimist doesn’t have bad days, it just means that they choose not to make it front and center in their world. They choose happiness. Happiness is a choice.

Well, the same goes for grief. Initially, the grief is compounded with the emotional pain and physical separation. As time goes on, as it has for me the last 9 months, you adjust to the physical separation but still struggle with the emotional pain. And it is easy to get lost in the pain. In fact, the pain is comforting. Few people, and I dare say only those who have experienced it, can understand the depth of sadness. How staying in the grief keeps you connected to the loved one and the mere thought of leaving this place of sadness is like hearing the words, “he’s gone” for the first time all over again.

Emotion rules in this period of time. It controls all. And it needs to be this way. It’s all part of the process. But, grief is a journey which means that it is constantly changing. Moving. And just like happiness, moving on and learning to live again is a choice. Finding happiness requires taking logic and placing it above the emotion, the pain and loss and choosing to move through.

The darkness that enveloped me took me to a dark place. Dark enough that I knew that I needed to change something. To choose to live again. To honor him. And ultimately to show Tristan that I am strong enough to survive him leaving me. That I can pick up the pieces and do good things with my life in spite of the pain. To choose happiness. I need to choose happiness.

The last 4 – 6 weeks have been about that. Reminding myself that in spite of the pain, I can be happy and more than anything, I can be a gift to someone else….maybe someone walking this road behind me, maybe in other ways. I don’t know exactly what this looks like, I just know that I have to choose, with intention, to move forward. For Tristan.

To choose to move forward into a more positive place doesn’t mean that at times I don’t miss him so much that I feel like my heart is breaking in two. One thought and I’m taken back to just how painful it is to live without him after 18 fabulous years with him. But this is not a place I can afford to stay in and I have to work replace that thought of loss with a positive one.

Tonight, as I sit here, the house is quiet. My kitten is snuggled in tight next to me on the couch, Ellie curled up at my feet, Jim in bed and I am alone with my thoughts. And, as the tears that sting my eyes fall from my cheeks on to my laptop, I am giving myself permission to miss him and to grieve.

I miss Sunday morning breakfast at Denney’s. It was our thing….started when he was little. Going to Denney’s on Sunday morning. I would buy a copy of the Sunday paper and go through the ads while Tristan drew on his paper placemat with crayons. We did it nearly every Sunday for many years and as he grew older, it was a guilty pleasure for the two of us to sneak off and have breakfast together at Denney’s.

I miss making him my beer pancakes or vanilla waffles. He LOVED my waffles! Sometimes for dinner, we would have waffles. It was our thing. Jim doesn’t like pancakes or waffles so we’ve never had them. I miss making them and I miss how much Tristan loved them.

I miss our walks. The last couple years, he and I spent a lot of time walking. Talking about school, talking about dreams and hopes, talking about love. I remember one night, a beautiful summer evening when we lived in downtown Redding, we went for a walk. We probably walked 2 miles, weaving in and out of dark downtown streets so engrossed in our conversation we were oblivious to any danger that might have befallen us. In fact, at one point I asked him if he was done and wanted to go home. He said, “not at all!” and we walked until we felt like going home. I miss those moments of just he and I.

I miss comforting him when he was sad or upset. I miss buying him surprise gifts. I miss giving him advice. I miss him coming over for dinner. I miss seeing him experience new firsts in life. And most of all, I miss his beautiful face. The face that I cradled in my hands at the age of 2 that grew into the chiseled, handsome face of a man. A man that I had raised and had given wings to fly out into this world and experience all it had to offer. I miss it all.

So, tonight I will cry. I will spend a while longer looking through the photos on my laptop, remembering the beautiful life I had with him from 1997 to 2014. My tears will carry with them the loss of a million hopes and dreams. I cry tonight because I have given myself permission to do so.

And tomorrow, I will return to my search for joy.