Think Before you Speak

They say I should feel lucky, I still have my memories. Lucky? They wonder, at this six month point, why I still grieve as I did at that first moment. They tell me I should get right with God, ummm, they know my relationship with God? They don't understand why I am not moving on, getting over it, letting go, saying a final good-bye. I find these things offensive.

Lucky. How is that lucky? The memories are not flesh and blood. They do not talk to me and tell me of their love or their day or their life. They do not bring fresh, new things to remember later. The memories are many but stop on the day he died. Stopped. Lucky would be if he were still here with me. All I have left of him are ... memories.

Why do I still grieve as though it were fresh and new? Because, everyday, it is fresh and new. One tends to forget, for moments at a time that they are gone, how they are gone, why they are gone. It would seem the universe does not allow that and is quick to slap you in the face, wake you back up to your new reality. You have to face that loss all over again, day after day. He is not 'just' my son. He is moments and years, flesh of my flesh. He occupied millions of corners of my world. Do you remember? Do you remember the day you gave birth? It did not take long for that little bundle to become completely your world. You could not imagine life without them or how you had a life before them. Now, suddenly, you have to re-imagine it all over again, without them. It does not fit, this reverse thinking, it does not work. The void left behind is larger than twenty universes, deeper than the sky. There is nothing in the known world to compare to this loss.

When someone tells me I need to get right with God, lean on God, call on God, I get very offended. No one, and I mean, No one knows what another persons relationship is with any God, deity or creator.

There are no laws, instructions or blueprints to go by. Why? Because every loss, every grief is unique and different from any other. Not worse or better, just sideways different. What works for one may not work for another. Just because you don't 'understand' someones grief, does not mean that they should not be grieving. It does not mean that they should have moved on by now, where did people learn the rights and wrongs of grieving? Especially people who have never walked this path. Think before you open your mouth and put your foot in it and pray you never know these truths. There is no moving on, getting over it, letting go, saying good-bye. There are only degrees of learning to live with your loss. Learning to live with your loss. There are no rights and wrongs, there are only levels of grief.

Ones does learn to live with this, but only in their own time and in their own way. Pushing them to move on will only alienate you from their lives. I will always grieve for Tim. The years may change the way I grieve, they may not. I have days when I think I have moved forward some and the very next day have it crash down on my head. At first, that was soul wrenching. I felt that I only fooled myself into believing that I would learn to live with this. That is not true though. Like it or not, there will be days when the grief is so horrible, it is like the first day. It does not mean I am not learning, it just means that I will always love and miss him. I will hurt more on some days than others.

I can't help those who will not open their minds to understand why we grieve the way we do. I think some are stuck on something they learned growing up. Some just don't want to understand even a little, like they are afraid that it is disease that will jump into their lives if they give understanding or compassion. I hope that if their time comes, they find more understanding and compassion than they were willing to give to others.

If I grieve forever, that is my right to do so. No one has the right to tell me otherwise. Tim is my son. He may not have meaning to anyone else, but he has meaning to me. Others have and will move on, that is their right to do so. I do not hold that against them. I do resent the ones who should have cared and didn't. But even they make only a small ripple in my pond. There are more important things in life................... like learning to live again with half my heart.