Always on My Mind

It is always there, just at the front of your mind. Whether you are conscious of it or not, it is aways there, the loss, the sadness the sorrow. Always there. You cannot step back from it for it is a part of you now, soaked deep into your heart, your soul. Certain sounds, smells, places can bring that grief crushing down in a nano second causing you to go blind to the world around you as you relive that sorrow. If you fight it, you fight yourself for it will have it's way. There are many levels of grief. Many layers. Some, you can overcome and move on from. Some are forever.

I lost a boyfriend in a horrific car accident when I was in my early teens. When you are a teen, you think that nothing will ever be right again. Your grief is the end all of everything. My dad died suddenly when I was in my twenties. I did not know then about the many different types of grief. In time, I learned to move past his death. I still smell cherry pipe tobacco and think of him. I remember him for the many stories he told, the crazy cartoons he drew for me, his laughter, his love. I smile, a twinge of sadness for he is gone. A wealth of memories of an amazing man. I thought that being able to move on from his loss prepared me for death. Over the years, I experienced many deaths and learned to move on from them. For all of that, it did not prepare me for the death of my child.

You can move past the loss of a grandparent, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins or friends, eventually most can find that path. A few will never move beyond it though. So yeah, all grievers are different. It is not just the grief that is different, it is also those who grieve. We are each unique from each other so how can our feeling of loss be the same? It isn't. For me, after living though so many who have gone on, the loss of my child is the greatest grief of all. I do not say that to downplay others sorrow for no ones sorrow is less than any other. The mother who gave birth, the father who taught life's lessons, they lose their immortality. They lose the child who has her eyes, his nose, their laugh. They lose dreams of future achievements, extended family, building greater memories. They lose what might have been. One expects to move on when we reach advanced, old age. It does not mean that we are grieved for any less, but that it is what we believe the natural order of life should be.

Every day, we face the possibilities of losing someone. If we allowed ourselves to dwell on that, we would be paralyzed, unable to live our lives. I think the brain pushes us away from those thoughts if only to allow us to move forward. When you lose a child, there is no moving forward from it. The child we nurtured, loved, worried over is suddenly and irreplaceably gone. Nothing prepares us for that. We get lost in that horror and many will not come back from it. That does not mean you cannot come back, you have to want to. Most of us don't want to. We have lost purpose, reason, joy. People avoid us as though we have become old time lepers. Those who have not been here think we are not trying, and sometimes, we are not, but not for the reasons they imagine. We have to find a reason to go on and to begin with, there are none.

People lose patience with us, we lose it with ourselves. I am slowly rebuilding the life that was ripped away from me. It will never be the same life. I will never be the same person I was before Tim died. I know that no matter how others feel, I cannot rush the healing whether it takes years or forever. It is what it is. Those who move away from us were mean't to go. I don't mean to make it sound so simple for it is beyond simple. I have found though that it is not as painful as I once thought it would be. I guess that is what great sorrow brings to us. Nothing can be worse than that.

When someone feels that I should be getting over this already, I just sigh inside. They will not know until the day they travel this road that getting over your child is not an option. It is not the same as the father or mother I lost. It does not compare to my grandparents or Aunts and Uncles. I cannot find anything anywhere in the world or universe that comes close to the loss of my son. I should be grateful that nothing does compare for that horror would be too much. Sometimes, it is hard to be grateful when you struggle with just living.

Tim will always be there, in the front of my mind. His place in my heart only reserved for him. No one can fill that spot, ever. I don't want to make this journey. I don't want to live for many more years. Yet, I will for however long or short that may be. It's a daily struggle that I can only hope eases a little as time moves on.