Tag: healing

Another ones comes. Another one will pass.

I woke up this morning, as with every other morning, hating that I have to miss you.

It was 3 years ago that I last saw your face with a smile. While it still had life. As I was leaving for work early in the morning and you had just gotten home from working overnight. We texted on and off all day and then…

That was it.

Gone in an instant because of someone else’s carelessness. And now we all had had our lives turned upside down. You’ve lost out on a life you deserved and we’ve all lost out on that life with you.

I honestly am not sure how I have survived 3 years without you. How does a mother live without the child she created? I truly think it’s because I haven’t had any other choice. Your brother needed me here.

So I threw myself into making sure he survived. Threw myself into school to make you proud…and admittedly as a distraction from my mind. Not much interest in anything else, really. Little interest in socializing. Taking care of myself or my health. I could only focus on survival mode. I can only hope that I’ve made you proud.

I just miss you so much. I think every day about what you’d be like if you were still here. I’m sure you’d be just the same, of course, but just how you’d have grown with the added years of experience. We grow so much as humans between 19 and 22.

Would you have gotten that promotion they were training you for? Would you have stayed there or left? Would you still be living with me, causing me to still trip over your shoes all of the time and have to search for all of my dishes in your room or would have saved enough to moved out? I’d have let you stay as long as you needed. My goal as a parent has always been to help my kids get started on a better footing that I had when I started.

I miss your tangential stories. I miss your hugs. I miss your silly laugh. I miss the way your eyes sparkled. I miss your dimples and making you laugh when I’d poke them. I miss being silly and making you laugh so you’d call me weird. I miss your smile. I miss your voice.

I miss YOU.

I miss you

I haven’t written in a long time. Not because you haven’t been on my mind. Quite the opposite really. 

It’s been nonstop. 

So many things you’re missing. I just had my graduation and I hate that you weren’t there.

Carter said it too. There was an empty seat next to him. He said that it made him think about how you should be in that seat. 

You and your brother have been my motivation for finishing this program. I truly was shocked to find out that you were telling everyone that I was back in school. As a parent of an adult child, I guess you just don’t think about your kids being proud of you. You don’t think about them bragging to everyone about you. I didn’t know until you were gone. Maybe you were as proud of me as I was of you? 

I could have taken a semester off after losing you. No one would have blamed me. But my mind was picturing you saying “Why the fuck would you do that?” 

So instead, you have been my motivation. You and Carter both. Better myself so I can be better for the both of you. Give you better than I had. That is all I have ever wanted for you two. 

I am sorry that I couldn’t protect you. 

As a kid. 

And that night. 

It’s all I ever wanted. 

It was my job and I failed. 

But I promise that I will do everything I can to protect your baby brother. He misses you so much. 

We both do. 

I have a few weeks left until I am officially done with school. 

I promise I will keep making you proud. 

milestones lost

As time passes, I keep thinking of the parts of his life that he’s missing. The parts that were all missing.

I’m thinking of the grandbabies I won’t get to have. The shared grandparent experience I won’t get to have with his dad and step mom. Carter is almost 14 and maybe he will want kids someday when he grows up. Maybe he won’t. And I’ll still have my honorary granddaughter and any other honorary grandbabies from all of my chosen kids.

But I won’t have his. And he won’t get that experience. He wanted to get married. And he wanted to be a dad. Cute little Bryce babies with those dark, long lashes and big dimples. I’d have spoiled the fuck out of those babies too. Just like I do with my honorary granddaughter, C. I can’t help it. She’s so damn cute. And honestly, she kinda looks a little like Bryce. Her mom is his older half sister so she has enough of the features from that side of the features that are similar to the ones that he got from his dad that they actually look a little alike from when he was little.

We’re getting closer and closer to 2 years and I just don’t even want to think about it. I don’t want to think about how it’s been so long since I’ve seen him smile. Heard his silly laugh. Given him a big hug. I still have our text thread in my phone and it’s still pinned to the top where it was before. I can’t move it. I don’t want to move it. I don’t want to delete it.

I want my baby back. I want to celebrate his adult milestones with him just as I celebrated every one of his childhood ones.

grief isn’t rational

There are times that I will be driving and just letting my mind wander. Listening to music. Sometimes thinking. Sometimes trying NOT to think. 

I’ll pass riders on the roads or highways. Sometimes alone…sometimes in pairs or groups. My mind immediately goes to him. Sometimes it even sees him in one of the riders. Maybe it’s the way they’re riding and it’s similar to his style. Maybe it’s their posture in the bike and I can tell that they’re also likely fairly tall by the way the back rounds like his did when he wasn’t sitting up straight. Sometimes it’s because the bike is a similar build or colors. 

No matter the reason, my mind goes to him. Sometimes a wish. Sometimes a drop of my heart. Sometimes even a double take despite that being completely irrational. 

Grief isn’t rational anyway. 

the passing of time

I know time passes. As parents, we see it every day. When they’re little, we say that we can’t wait for them to sleep through the night. Then we can’t wait until they are potty trained. Until they are past puberty. Past the talking back phases.

Once they’re grown, we miss the old days.

We never think that there will someday be a time when we will miss them altogether. Not because we simply don’t see them, although that happens too, but because they’re gone. They have been taken from us, whether by illness or addiction or by an accident caused by the actions of another.

It is now a couple of days shy of 16 months since I last spoke to my baby. Since I last truly saw his face. Every second has been a new piercing stab into my heart. Every day that I wake up and he isn’t here just breaks my heart over again. I am still unsure if I am grateful or upset that I don’t remember my dreams. Do I wish he could visit me in my dreams or would it just hurt me even worse?

As time passes, it sometimes hurts to see those his age living their lives. I am seeing them grow in their careers. Graduate college. Get engaged. Make pregnancy announcements.

I love them and I am glad for them. I am glad that their parents are getting these experiences. Truly I am. But I can’t help but hurt too. Not because they don’t deserve these experiences because they all absolutely do!

But because Bryce deserved them, too. Because I deserved them. Because his dad deserved them. His stepmom deserved them. And Rory deserved them.

He’d be 21 now.

We deserved to experience him having the 2 birthdays he’s missed.

We deserved to experience him having the 2 Christmases he’s missed.

We deserved to experience him having the promotion he was training for and missed.

We deserved to experience he and Rory having the life they had planned.

We all deserved all of it.