I remember very well the morning I woke on April 12, 2015-it was one year since I’d gotten the awful news; one year since the life I thought I was going to have turned into the life I didn’t choose.
I was horrified that my heart had continued to beat for 365 days when I was sure it wouldn’t make it through the first 24 hours.
And I was terrified.
Read the rest here: Why is the Second Year SO Hard?
I think it was somewhere around two months from Dominic’s departure when my heart realized life was moving forward whether I granted permission or not.
Not only folks on the fringes and the “bigger world out there” but close by-in my own family, my own circle of intimate friends-people were making plans, having birthdays, going places and doing things.
I wanted to scream.
Could the world not take more notice that it was absolutely NOT business as usual? Was I the only one whose heart was so shattered that the thought of another sunrise was painful? How could I walk into a future that didn’t include Dominic?
By the grace of God, I did it.
No one can keep the world from turning, the sun from rising, time from ticking by.
But it took a great deal of strength and courage.
First it was a “grin and bear it” kind of courage. I strapped on my armor and tucked a hankie in my pocket. I could show up and smile (a bit), talk (awhile) and muddle through.
Sometimes it didn’t go so well. I had to apologize and leave early. And I was always exhausted.
Then it was an “I’m going to be present for my family” kind of courage. The last thing I wanted to do was shortchange my earthbound children. I worked to get a better handle on my thoughts and emotions. I learned how to pre-grieve major events and milestones. I found I could bring Dom with me by wearing a meaningful piece of jewelry or tucking a keepsake away where I could touch it if I needed to.
I was able to laugh (most of the time), make small talk and write dates on the calendar again.
Now the courage that helps me hold on as I’m pulled forward into the future is informed by the fact that every passing day is one day closer to the reunion my heart longs for. What first seemed impossible is now habitual. Sorrow and joy can coexist. I don’t have to be empty of one to feel the other. The future is not my enemy-it’s where I can and will love ALL my children, husband, family and friends well until the day we are in eternity together forever.
My love for Dominic is Background Music to everything I do. But it doesn’t always demand my full attention. Sorrow is no longer all I feel and Dominic’s absence no longer all I see.
Sunrise is still hard to face some days.
My heart will always long for the time things were as they should be instead of how they are.
But I’m thankful for the courage to step into the future even when I’m afraid.
Some people say they’d love to know what life has around the corner.
Not me.
At least not much past tomorrow morning.
If my husband and I had known thirty-five years ago what our lives would be like along the way, we may very well have turned tail and run in the other direction!
There have been many, many good things in those years.
We have four beautiful children whom we love so much. Two are married and their spouses are a blessing to our family.
It’s a brand new feeling to watch your son with his.
There have been a fair number of not-so-good things too.
Job layoffs, illness, the death of Hector’s parents one right after the other and the stress and strain of life’s details when it seemed we couldn’t get a break.
But nothing compares to burying Dominic.
How does a heart learn to live with a giant piece missing?
We have, though.
We’ve muddled through.
The commitment we made all those years ago has stood firm.
It’s battered, crumpled, muddied and torn, but it remains the guiding promise of our lives together.
There are all kinds of doubts that creep in and take up residence in a mind after child loss.
Most of them have to do with the child that ran ahead to heaven.
But many are also about me: “What should I be doing? Where should I go from here?”
For those of us active in church ministries, we wonder, “When do I return to service?”
Read the rest here: The Danger of Rushing to Serve After Loss
So we went to my niece’s high school graduation this week.
It was another in a recent long line of events Dominic was not here to celebrate with us.
Another set of pictures missing his grin, his shoulders, his goofy antics, his presence.
It’s really beginning to add up.
And it hurts.
We were plunged headlong into some important celebrations in the first two months after Dominic left us-two graduations and a wedding. But there was a kind of lingering aura that made it a little more bearable. Everyone involved KNEW Dominic. So while he was not there bodily, he was present nonetheless because so many people carried a piece of him in their hearts, had stories to tell and made comments about how he would have done this or that.
My niece obviously knew Dominic. And that’s a comfort. But the last time he saw her she was just entering her teen years. Now she’s leaving high school headed toward adulthood.
Fiona’s new husband never met Dom. His friends are a world set apart from our pre-loss life. His family knows Fiona lost a brother and me a son but they have no idea how that fact changes everything. They can’t. They don’t have anything to compare it to.
My sweet little grandson will grow up hearing stories but never seeing the man behind them. He will perceive Uncle Dominic as a tale told sometimes with tears and sometimes with laughter but never be the target of Dominic’s sometimes wicked humor nor feel the comfort of his strong arms.
In some ways five years might as well be a lifetime.
So much has changed.
So much I want to talk over with Dominic.
So much I wish he was here to see.
I know he is perfectly content in Heaven with Jesus. He’s not missing out on a thing! But I can’t stop my heart from selfishly wanting him here with me as well.
It’s like playing a piano with a sticky key-somehow the melody is always just a little off.
Never quite right.
❤
It’s just not comforting for my heart to think my son is looking down on me from Heaven.
I can’t reconcile the idea that he might be watching my sorrow with what the Bible says about Heaven being a place of joy and peace.
But I do love the idea that he’s outside time and so isn’t “waiting” on reunion the same way I am.
No matter how many years it may be, it will be only a “blink of an eye” for him. ❤
I used to look at tombstones in cemeteries and do the math between the dates.
I was most focused on how long this person or that person walked the earth.
I still do that sometimes. But now I do something else as well.
I look to the left and the right to see if the person who ran ahead left parents behind. My eye is drawn to the solitary stones with the same last name next to a double monument clearly honoring a married pair.
And then I do a different kind of math.
I count the years between the last breath of the child and the last breath of his or her mama.
Because while that first date marked an end for everyone else, for the mama, it marked the beginning of the rest of her life- a life she never imagined nor would have chosen.
I wonder how many lives have been cut short by the effects of grief. I know some folks have tried to research it, but it’s so hard. Because grief ends up doing things to bodies that look like aging or like other disease processes and it’s really difficult to tease it out.
But those of us who live this life know.
We know.
What’s a moment for everyone else, is a lifetime for us. What is a date on the calendar, a trip to a funeral home, a casserole delivered to a door in hopes of lifting spirits for everyone else, is so much more for us.
I don’t begrudge your ignorance.
I celebrate it!
My heart breaks every single time another name is added to the roles of “bereaved parent”.
I think a lot about the generations gone before. Before vaccinations, before penicillin, before so many modern blessings that lengthen life and give hope where there used to be none.
I think about the families involved in WWI and WWII. I understand the need to call the first war “The Great War” and assume such atrocities would stop mankind from falling headlong into them again.
But it didn’t.
So, so many families that made the highest sacrifice.
So, so many parents that hung that photo of their son or daughter on the wall and never moved it-because they were as frozen in time as their child.
I have a friend who does home-based physical therapy. She often goes to the homes of elderly patients and lovingly and gracefully listens to their stories. If it is part of their history, they almost always point out the child who never grew older and tell the tale of how much they miss him or her.
It’s so, so hard for others to understand how very different child loss and out-of-order death is from any other loss in this life.
But it is not a moment.
It is not even a week or month or years.
It’s a lifetime.
We miss them and mourn them for a lifetime.
Today I decided for one day to ignore the clock and my own internal tick, tick, tick tracking minutes and hours.
Today I did or didn’t do whatever I wanted.
I refused to check my list.
Instead of optimum efficiency, batching chores and trips upstairs or down, I meandered in and out of rooms. I picked up one thing and passed another. I didn’t “clean as you go” when I made my salad. I started something and didn’t finish. I stared. I hummed. I listened to wind chimes tinkle away the hours.
My big fat cat jumped in my lap and I let him stay there even though it means I can’t do anything else because my arms don’t quite reach around him.
People tell me all the time, “Don’t worry! It’ll be there tomorrow!” But that is precisely what usually worries me-it WILL be there tomorrow.
Today, though, I gulped those words, chewed them and swallowed. Gone.
And you know what?
It was fine.
Fine.
Just fine.
I doubt this will be a trend. Fifty-five years of task-oriented, time-conscious living can’t be swept away by one glorious day of living minute to minute.
But it’s a start.
We’ve had an unusually warm winter this year.
Not at all like the winter in 2014 which was punctuated by several deep freeze days and one giant “Snowmeggedon” that resulted in hundreds of people trapped in cars, at work or in schools.
But there are other things that strike a chord in my heart and make me feel like I’m reliving that January through April.
Lots of rain-both here and at my parents’ place in Florida. A few days before Dominic left us, I sent him a photo of his younger brother nearly knee deep in creek water that had spilled from the banks into a nearby field. He couldn’t believe it! I still have the texts.
As for my parents’ home-well the rain has already filled the ponds which have risen across some spots in the dirt road that connects them to everywhere. In 2014, the water got so high they were forced to evacuate for months as travel became nearly impossible except for lifted trucks or tractors. It probably won’t reach that state again since dirt has been added to the road bed but it’s coming awful close and that taps memories and feelings in ways it’s hard to explain.
The year Dominic left us was going to be a year full of celebrations, culminations and hearty parties. Julian was graduating with a Business Management degree, James Michael was wrapping up Veterinary School, Dominic would have survived the first two years of Law School with relatively easy classes left, Fiona was advancing in her Masters of Public Health Degree and James Michael and Lillie were getting married.
We thought all we’d need to “survive” that year was a cold winter and wet spring.
We were wrong.
This year is another year of celebration: Fiona is marrying Brandon. James Michael is coming home from deployment and will welcome, along with Lillie, his first child. My husband will retire.
And all the preparation, along with the rain, is making me anxious.
I wish it didn’t.
Something about the timing, the temperature, the smell of green grass growing and leaves unfurling just overwhelms my heart.
I’m so much better at planning now than I was just a year ago. I can think more clearly, work more consistently, stay on track and make progress much better than those first years after Dominic ran ahead.
I have notebooks stacked on my table, decorations stacked in the room that used to be Dom’s. Plastic bins full of tidbits we’ll use for the wedding and bridal showers. My dress is sleeved in plastic and hung on the door for safe keeping.
I’m as ready as I can be.
But once you’ve made big plans and had them shattered in an instant, once you’ve looked far forward to exciting times and had dancing turned to mourning, once you’ve done all the right things to make everything right and it’s gone all wrong-well, you just can’t shake the feeling that it might happen again.
I’m working hard to throw off the mantle of hesitation and anxiety that threatens to weigh me down.
I’m doing everything I can to remind my heart that this is an entirely different year, these are completely different celebrations.
Some days I am really good at it.
Others, not so much.
But I AM looking forward to all the beautiful things on my calendar.
New marriage. New life. Bigger family circle.
Spring is the year’s promise.
I’m hanging on to that. ❤
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.
❤
thelifeididntchoose 