Every Now and Then, I Fall Apart

It is strange now how the brain views everything. It is as though new pathways were forged in my mind the moment of my loss. This Sunday, October 5, 2014, Tim will be gone nine months. Nine months to bring him into this world, nine months that he has been gone. I fall apart. I tried to not think about Sunday, for it was a Sunday that he left. I try not to think about 5:00 in the evening for it was then that I found him. But somehow, my brain keeps count. As the day approaches, I feel sadder, cry more, ache immeasurably. My thoughts are a bird in a cage, flapping to get out, trying to fly free, trapped. Forever trapped.

You can't help but draw on the differences of now and of then. I carried him with pride, knowing before the doctors did that I would have the precious son I longed for. The day he was born, my life became complete. I had my son, I had my daughter, I did not need more, they were enough. I watched him grow, become a man, live his life. I was proud of him for his compassion, his love for others, his giving spirit. I am still proud of him. I have profound moments of total disbelief that he is gone. Those moments bring me to my knees and again, I fall apart. That little baby boy is gone, but I am still a mom to a wonderful son.

A few months after Tim died, my husbands Uncle breathed his last. As we sat through the funeral, my mind compared it all to what I had loss. The uncle was fairly old, lived a long and rewarding life and was following the natural order of the universe. I looked around at the mourners and realized it was wrong to draw comparisons. Their faces spoke volumes about their own personal grief. It did not matter if the uncle lived a full life, what mattered was that he left behind so many that loved him, so many that hurt for him. One cannot compare their pain against others pain. The Uncle was loved by someone just as much as Tim is love by me. As we were leaving, I heard the Aunt say, 'I don't know what I am going to do without him,' and my heart ached for her. Her loss just as great as my own. We don't know what we are going to do without them, how we will live with this horror. There are no words that can comfort, no actions that can make it right.

I find it is so terribly sad that there is nothing that can prepare us, even a little bit, for death. The are no words or sentences or books that can tell us just how devastating it is. They are only words until we actually live that life of loss. It is then that we understand. We feel that glitch in our heart when someone dies and we pray that the sorrow never happens to us. Of course it will happen. One can not get away from it. The one sure, unavoidable thing in life... is death. No one is prepared for it. It is a concept not a reality, until it comes. It is also human to not think about death even though it is happening everyday.

There was a 5 car pile up near my home last night. My first thought was, 'I am glad Tim did not die in a car accident.' Why did I think that? Because, how our loved one dies becomes stuck in our mind. When we see something that is similar, it brings it all to the surface. For those moments in time, it is all fresh again. When we hear of someone dying the way our loved one did, the horror is immediate and we fall apart. There is too much that can and will trigger our deepest sorrow. A word, a song, food, colors, places, our life before our loss. We have to learn to live differently because the old way of living is gone. If we try to go back, we will only hurt ourselves more for there is no going back, not with a big piece of that puzzle gone. Our life is now defined by our sorrow. We will forever see everything with different eyes, different thoughts.

You wonder how you will live. You are doing it now. Each time you fall and then pick yourself up, you are learning to live. You are learning how to avoid things that bring on the hurt even though, deep inside, you never stop hurting. You are learning the world all over again from a different place. From the place of loss. It colors our way of thinking, being, living. Each time you fall apart, you pull the ragged pieces back together, mismatched and uneven and stand up. You have days where nothing matters. All you want to do is fall down and never get up. Yet you get up. I think you are greater than you were, not stronger, but greater.

There is no choice here, we cannot change what has passed away. For each step forward, we take two steps back. We have days when we think we are good, that things are not as painful and then suddenly we are blindsided by the unexpected. We fall apart once more. At those times, we despair. We think that we have fooled ourselves and not healed even a little. We are ready to give up. Some do give up. Maybe we need to rearrange our mind set. We have always heard that one moves on, finds closure. What is wrong with us that we cannot? Absolutely nothing. For me there is no such thing as moving on, closure. He was/is my son. For me there is learning to live a different life. A life that I hope to find joy in again someday. I cannot live by what others say I should, I have to do it my way. As Sunday approaches, I will fall apart. I will cry more, remember more, hurt more. But Sunday will pass. It's okay to fall apart.