Box of Stones

Still here. Existing on some level.  Writing does not come easily now.  It takes too much energy to express the same thing over and over and over.  I don't know how I used to write on here when Nick was sick.  I guess it is a good example of the changes in me.  I have no energy to do this now, like I used to back then. Losing your child to the ravages of cancer treatment does horrible things to one's mind, body, and soul.  I am a mess.  I am a shell of my former self...a fragile shell.  I am angry as hell and I am sad as hell too. It doesn't change.  And of course, it's all my own fault. (Mantra repeating in my head..."I must ALLOW my grief to change. I must ALLOW my grief to change.")  As if I ever had control over anything, why would I have control over that?  F*CK allowing anything!  I will allow you to take your stupid ass mantras and stick them where the light don't shine. I like to be alone.  Why?  Because it is better that way...better to stay away from those who have no idea how HORRIBLY PAINFUL THIS IS!  ("The pain will soften with time.")  Yeah right!  How much time we talkin' here?  The next millennium?  There is nothing that will "soften" this pain.  I have tried a litany of things...reading, writing, Compassionate Friends meetings, conferences filled with guest speakers and workshops and hundreds of  "others" just like me.  We have all lost a child, some of us more than one.  A sea of humanity facing a new stark reality;  a sea of sadness and pain.  We are all swimming in it...(cue music: "You gotta swim Swim in the dark There's no shame in drifting Feel the tide shifting and wait for the spark Yeah you've gotta swim Don't let yourself sink Just find the horizon I promise you it's not as far as you think.")  REALLY?  Oh, I am sinking alright.  Sinking like a stone.

Side note:  Even my music player on here is now messed up and useless.  Just another thing to tick  me off.  Why couldn't Nick be like Andrew?  Why? Why?  Why couldn't he be alive?  Why couldn't he be a survivor, a fighter, a winner, a poster boy for the magical cure of bone marrow transplant?  Why couldn't we have our miracle?  Why does this kind of shit have to happen?

Today is July 4th....woo hoo!  Another year of remembering the last fourth of July I spent with Nickolas.  If I never see another firework display, it will be ok by me.  Tried counseling to see if somehow it would "erase" all these images from my mind.  The pain, the sorrow, the unbearable feeling of helplessness, watching your child waste away in front of your eyes. Watching Nick suffer with every single breath he took....apparently my therapist did not know how to do that.  She really had no clue what to do with me...no clue whatsoever...

Statute of limitations on a lawsuit for Nickolas will be up this August.  Two law firms would not take Nick's case.  Dead people don't make good witnesses.  Dead people cannot speak for themselves.  Cases like Nick's are complicated don't cha know!  No way to prove how horrible things were, how failure to listen ultimately led to Nick's death.  I want to go to that stinkin' ass hospital and I want to stand in the lobby and scream at the top of my lungs and then I want to cry and cry and cry as long and as loud as I can for as long as i can.  Do you know that no one cries at that place?  Not in public...you would think there would be a lot more crying going on in a cancer center.  But nope, everything is just so freakin' Pollyanna there, no one cries out loud, not the patients, not the families, not the nurses, certainly not the doctors!  How does this happen?  On that horrible day that Nick "died"  (I mean the day he was "killed"  by giving him high doses of propofol and then taken off the ventilator...you know, the day he died so "peacefully")  while we all stood around like it was a three ring circus...JESUS!!!)  I didn't even CRY!  What the frick was the matter with me? 
                      I HATE THAT DAY SO MUCH!!!
Couldn't even get that day right!  My poor sweet boy, sedated into a coma and yet, he tried to wake up and reach for his sister and god knows what he was thinking or understanding at that moment. Why.....why.....why.....why....why....why....?????????????????????????????????????????  


And then he was gone....and then he was a gone....and then he was gone FOREVER!!
And now he is a pile of white dust sitting in a brown plastic container.   That is all that is left of my child....a brown plastic container of cremated flesh and bone.  If you look you can see the pieces and I wonder was that his leg bone, or his foot bone, or his skull bone?   A mother should not have to wonder these things about her beautiful, first-born child.  A mother should not have to have these things in her brain.  

On August 13, 2012 it will be three years since Nick has been gone from our lives.  The days go by....time marches on, time marches on, let it march, time means nothing to me, but, a life sentence, a prison of grief.  Another Mom wrote this after losing her child..."one day, one year...it is all the same."  Today is 1056 days....1056 days.....1056 days....since my heart was shattered into a million pieces and my life was forever changed.  I am old and tired, scattered and broken, I am beyond saving and beyond repair, I am forlorn and filled with sorrow, I am confused and angry, I do not know who I am or what will become of me.  Most days, I do not even care. 

Box of Stones

My harbor has a boat in it,
The water makes it's way around it,
And when the sun shines down,
The winds, they blow
And I miss you more!

Lyrics "Box of Stones"  Benjamin Francis Leftwich