Searching

"I guess it's always changing...I just wake up each day in a slightly different place - grief is like a moving river."

Sometimes when I write I feel like I "need" to write something magical and thoughtful. And sometimes I write because I have been inspired to write. Tonight is different although I cannot put words to why I feel that way. I feel the need to be real, to be understood.

Tonight I find my heart searching. Searching for the place where I feel safe and not afraid. Searching for that corner where I can unassumingly believe that everything works out okay and that life does not hold hurt and pain for anyone, myself included. I want to close my eyes and wake up three months from now. Past my mom's surgery, past my father-in-laws hospitalization, and while we are at it past Zach's anniversary of passing.

Right now my father-in-law is in the hospital with pneumonia. He is doing okay. But seeing him and hearing about what they are testing for and considering brings back a room of memories that are hard for me to push away.

I can remember the moment that I realized that my son was not going to return to me. And I punish myself time and time again for ever telling him that he could go on without me. I wish I had had the guts to ask him to fight for me that night. The guts to ask him to stay here.

I remember the night he passed away. I remember holding him as the last breath left his body. I did not know it at the time but that night has forever altered my relationships with medical professionals. I know that I desperately need them but I have a general distrust for them as well.

I remember things that no mother, daughter, husband, child should ever really remember of someone they love. All I have to do is open this corner of my heart and mind and I can walk through that night minute by minute, moment by moment.

But I am not trying to write about that. I am just trying to find that "place." The one where life is safe. Where disappointments do not hang around for an encore. That place where I can truly celebrate my daughter turning two instead of thinking of the three going on four year old that should be here too. Apparently tonight to get there I have to lower the levee and allow my hurt to flow away.

And then I wonder... Does he think of us? Does he know that he changed my life? Does he know how much I miss him?

I remember that the last time I held him he had the smell of Tylenol on his breath. I finally went through his clothes and gave them away. I have memories of him in every outfit in the collection. I miss him. I gave him baths differently than I do the girls. He never went out in the cold without a onsie underneath his clothing and for some reason I cannot bring myself to put onsies on the girls...

I wonder, did he know how much I loved and love him?

I love you.
~ Mom