Chosen Paths

One of the biggest things I like when I write a story or paint a picture is that if you screw up, you can always go back and fix it. On canvass or within the story, there is always a different way, a different path. Life is partly that way too. You usually have a choice, a chance to change things. Death is one of those absolutes that cannot be changed and leaves no room for second chances. You are left with the harsh words you said, the actions you didn't take, the smile you did not give. I think about paths taken and not taken. There are times I hurt myself with the question that if I had stayed up with Tim that last night, would he still be here? Would I have been able to start his heart again if I had been there with him? Would he have wanted to stay or be resentful I did not let him go and then he would go anyway at a later time in a worse way? Questions, wondering, can eat us alive if we let it. Though it does not ease the loss, I figure I was where I was suppose to be at the time I had to be there. When the questioning comes I have to block it or it will take over. That is the path I have chosen. To accept that I could not save my son. That for some reason I will not know in this life, it was not my role to save him. That hurts a little. We spent their lives saving them in a million small ways, that was our job, to protect our loved ones. When we can't, we feel we failed.

It is easy, looking back, to see the paths we took, the ones we should have taken and the ones we were glad we had enough sense not to take. At the time though, one is blind to the many roads. After Tim died, that was one of those blinders that came off. With clarity, I could see the paths before me. There were a few, all different except for one thing. The grief will also travel every one of them with me. It is the one thing that will go wherever I go. It has become the absolute, the residue left over from loss. It does not matter how many times I repaint this picture, change the words in this story, the loss will bleed through. One of the first things, hard to accept, the loss is forever. Fighting it, denying it, running from it will not make it not true. The harder we try not to see it, the more hurt we become. We become mentally and physically ill as well. Grief takes it toll on us completely.

Weeks after Tim's death, the desperate search began. I looked everywhere it was possible to look, searching for someone, anyone, to tell me this pain would go away. I needed to be told that, in time, I would not carry this horrible sorrow. Yeah, it became an obsession. There had to be someone out there who could relieve this all consuming pain for I could not image anyone living with this so they must have found a way to get beyond it, over it, away from it. Each story I read, each person I talked to, my spirit sank lower into hopelessness. The few I found who said they got over it made me feel that they were in denial. There was no magic potion, secret words, shadowy path that would take me away from this relentless emotional roller-coaster. When I was told, over and over again, that I would learn to live with this, that made me sink lower. How does one learn to live with pain this devastating? Did that mean that I would never find ease? This pain would stay exactly the same? For some of us, it does for these are the paths we choose.

I cannot change the colors of the pictures of the past. I cannot rewrite the words that say he is gone. The whys, the hows, the path of before. But.... I can paint a picture of the future, my own, not others. I can write the words of what I will do, not change the actions of what is done. Each day, he is repainted, rewritten into my life for he will always be there. My grief does not go away, but it changes day by day. I allow myself to cry for tears ease the pain a little. It is not the pain of the beginning of this loss, it is the pain of loss itself. I know it will always be there and it will change as it goes depending on which path I step on that day. Letting go of him is not an option nor should it be. We do not love someone just to shut them away when they have gone. Crazy to think otherwise. We travel a new life, without choice to set foot on that path, but we have choice on how we live it. What we carry with us, is our love. He will always be in the picture, in shadow some days, full color on others. What was that old saying? "Accept what we cannot change." With empathy from a 'Forever Mom.'