4 months already? How?

Tomorrow will be 4 months. 

4 months. I might say things in this post that I’ve said before but I’m having some feels about the whole 4 months thing so they’re all popping back up. Not that they ever went away but I guess they’re just peeking back out further? It’s odd how time passes so quickly and yet slowly at the same time. I can close my eyes and imagine that morning. Leaving for work at 4:15am. Pulling out of the garage and seeing that Bryce was sitting in his car just decompressing after his night shift. I texted him and told him he was silly and he’d be more comfortable inside. He said he was comfortable and was just listening to music and relaxing for a few before going inside. I said okay and that I’d see him after I got off work. We texted later that day but I didn’t get to see him again. The last time I saw my baby alive and breathing was in passing through 2 different car windows at 4:15am that morning. Both windows up because it was late December so it was really cold. It feels like yesterday. I wish I could tell myself to stop and jump out of the car to hug him. The next time I saw him was 1 week later while he was lying in a coffin. I try to close my eyes and imagine him laughing and smiling and joking around like he always did but more often, closing my eyes makes me flash to that night, racing up to the scene of the accident, flashing police lights with blockades, being told what happened and that he was gone, mental images of him in the coffin and how he looked a little like him…but also…not. Many of us have dreams about him. Some don’t. I rarely/never remember my dreams, even when I wake up knowing I had one. But sometimes I wake up tense. My jaw still clenched and sore so I can tell it’s been that way for a while. It makes me wonder if those are nights that I’m dreaming about him. If so, maybe I’m glad I never remember my dreams? Maybe it would be worse if I did?  

Though that all feels like yesterday, it also feels like so long ago. 

4 months. It’s been 121 days without him. I am glad he loved taking photos and videos like I do because it means I have so many of them so I can see his natural self, silly side, his natural smile, and hear his voice. I am so scared of forgetting the sound of his voice. But the videos aren’t the same. I want to hear him walking through the house saying “MooooOooOoommmm”, which I know means he’s about to ask if he can use my card to go get Cane’s. I actually want to hear his bike pulling into the garage. I want to hear him and Rory laughing as he’s tickling her or something and she’s running towards my room yelling “Mom!” laughing hysterically and jumping on my bed as if they’re little kids and my bed is the tag “safe zone”. I want to call him “home slice” just to hear him tell me “You’re so fucking weird” while laughing. How has it been so long since those things last happened? Has it really been 4 months? Is life really that fucked up? 

We’re going to be moving in a few months. It’s gotten so hard to be in this house. Where he last slept. The garage he left on his bike that evening, expecting to come back in a few hours to meet Rory to watch Disney movies and snuggle because he was a gigantic sappy dude.

I’m excited to move. Not just for the change. I’m excited to finally be in a position to be buying a house. My friends and family know but I haven’t shared it here on the blog yet even though some of the readers are in the same group. It was already in my plan to look for and try to buy a house this year. I have been working for years to get myself into a good spot financially to do so. I wanted to provide that stability for my boys. Give Carter a set place that wasn’t a rental so he could paint walls and know that it’s OURS. 

Needless to say, I’m happy that I was approved to buy and we will be closing in a new construction once it’s finished in about 3 months. I’m excited but yet the feelings are conflicting. 

Because grief is a fucking bitch. 

I am excited to be able to buy. I am sad to leave the place with his “lasts”. I am excited to make roots. I am sad…

Bryce was supposed to be here to share this. He was 19 and dreamed of the day he’d be able to move out on his own but I’d also told him that he was welcome to stay at home as long as he needed…with a couple rules. 

1. Be respectful
2. Keep your shit clean (which never happened 🤷🏻‍♀️)
3. Either work or go to school 
4. Keep me roughly informed of what’s going on only so I know you’re safe…don’t need specifics. Just “going out with friends, be home late”.

We did well with those things with only a few hiccups when his stubborn side came out because that’s when the know-it-all came out too and I had to quickly learn as he got older that the whole “yes, dear” applied to teenage boys with big dreams too. No one could convince Bryce with big dreams, brilliant dreams admittedly, that no one would give a 19-year-old a business loan. So I let him dream. College wasn’t his thing. He chose to work. Bounced a couple jobs at the end of high school and right after until he settled on what he liked…he found his job with Suntec Concrete and found that he really enjoyed the construction life. He was doing well there. Got to learn how to pour concrete, drive a forklift, be a safety supervisor, and was even starting training to be a foreman. 

Despite wanting to move out, he realized that we coexisted fairly easily. He had freedom. And he was able to save his money instead of paying a fortune on rent. I moved out at 17 and have always felt that if I can set my kids up to start their lives in a better position than I did, that’s what I would do. So I was okay with him being at home. Buying a home would have been for him too. For me. For Carter. For Bryce. Yes, he did and always would have had a place in any rental I had but buying was just my dream for them. A permanent place for him to come back to me once he did move out. Get married. Have babies. Bring my grandbabies to visit. Adorably stubborn grandbabies with long lashes and deep dimples. 

Everything I’ve done in my life has been for my boys. Anytime I’ve felt like giving up, I didn’t because of them. At first, I never gave up because I had Bryce. Then later, I had Carter too so it was both of them keeping me grounded. Helping me push for any glimmer of strength to keep treading water when I was really too tired to keep going. 

Now…I hate admitting that Carter might be the only reason that I’m still fighting to survive. But I truly think it’s accurate. If I didn’t have him here depending on me, I can’t say for certain that I wouldn’t have just gone to lay in the street where spot where Bryce’s heart stopped and just hoped for mine to stop too. Or for another careless driver to not see me just like the one that supposedly didn’t see Bryce. 

I have no choice now but to force myself to keep treading water, even if it means using floaties to do it. Those floaties might look like relying on those close to me, antidepressants, therapy, verbally vomiting my thoughts here, and disassociating from the word from time to time when I feel overstimulated. It’s okay to need those things to survive and right now my life is simply about survival.

Getting through each day so I can wake up the next. Both of those days without my baby here with me. Both of those days without Carter’s big brother here.