It happens most often as I am drifting off to sleep.
There is this one spot on the bedroom bookshelf where my eyes landed that first night-one paperback spine that instantly transports me to the moment I had to close my eyes on the day I found out my son would never come home again.
And it is fresh.
Absolutely, positively fresh.
Like “just happened” fresh.
You’d think that nearly five years of intervening experience, nearly five years of grief work, nearly five years of trying so darn hard to learn to tuck that feeling away deep down so it can’t escape would have worked whatever magic time is supposed to work.
But it hasn’t.
Oh, most days I can lock that lid down tight. I can distract my mind, busy my hands and keep my heart from wandering too close to despair.
Darkness though.
Shadows and silence and stillness give room for the memory to rise to the surface.
And it does.
My son is never coming home again.
Fresh.
Absolutely, positively fresh.
“Just happened” fresh.
❤
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So true. I am trying to discipline my mind as I lay down to try to sleep. My mind goes to Jeff’s last night and wee hours of the morning, when he slowly slipped away after falling from the roof of his fraternity. His friends did not know he fell, just thought he needed to “sleep it off.” They watched him die when a call to 911 would have saved him. He slipped away. This is where my mind goes without discipline and prayer. I am just so sad, at times still very angry. I often stay up later than I should, thinking being really tired will help my mind shut down. I attempt to focus on true, honorable, right, pure, lovely things, work to take every thought captive. It is so achingly hard, isn’t it? I miss him so.
Forever Jeff’s momma💙💛
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Oh, what hard things to carry in your mama’s heart. I work to take thoughts captive too. It requires diligence and great determination, doesn’t it? ❤
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December was 5 years that my daughter went ahead to heaven.
Just the other day I was doing something and I thought to myself , I have to ask Vanessa(my daughter) and just for that moment it felt like she never left. Than reality hit!💖
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❤
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Yes Melanie. For me too, drifting off to sleep is the danger time to get lost down that road of remembering the awful last hours of Kari’s life and realising again that I won’t get to see her again in this life. I’ve learnt lots of strategies which I use to try and avoid this, because it just wrecks any possibility of sleep. Once my mind goes down that track, there’s no getting off. I have to get up and have a cup of tea and do something distracting for a while, before trying again. It used to frequently be a cycle I’d go though several times a night, but thankfully it’s now only several times a week or even less.
So now I drink herbal sleep tea and have a routine that helps my body know its sleep time. It doesn’t always work, but mostly it does.
One suggestion, based on your post – have you thought of moving that paperback whose spine catches your eye? I know it won’t fix things, but sometimes it’s just a little thing that can release a trigger. Just a thought…..
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Good idea, Rhyl! It’s funny that I’ve never thought about moving the book. Thank you. I also have a bedtime ritual that helps me. ❤
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Thank you for this. These days in February leading up to the celebration of his 30th birthday on 2/7/16 and the following days until we learned that he was gone from this world on 2/16/16 are etched in my memory in exquisite and excruciating detail. The pain is fresh and acute – like a stabbing in the heart. Gosh I miss him, so.
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The missing never ends! How can it when our child is fitted so perfectly into that space in our hearts that can’t be filled by anyone else. Praying for your strength dear one. ❤
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Thank you for helping me, and all of us….
I am Danny’s mom and always and forever will be the mother of three sons.
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Yes, you are absolutely the mother of two sons. I am sorry for your pain and your loss. Praying grace and mercy over your heart. ❤
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Yes. All of it.
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