Living Parallel Lives

I cannot say "Merry" Christmas anymore.  I don't know if I will ever be able to say it.  The best I can do is wish "peace" for those who are able to celebrate...I have placed an excerpt from a CaringBridge site below, it gives great insight into what it is like to go through life after losing a child...of any age!  Sara gave me the most wonderful gift this year.  She had guitar picks personalized with a picture of Nickolas on one side and part of the Emerson quote we used at Nick's memorial. The Emerson quote is, "Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, and drink the wild air."  The back of the pick say, "Drink the wild air."  I am so far from being able to do that right now...the guitar has been a blessing for me in some way...the music is soothing and I feel closer to Nickolas when I play.  I don't understand why and I don't need to understand.  I just do...

Here is the excerpt...this is another Mom who lost her son to cancer (neuroblastoma).  Her son was amazing and awesome too.  It has been a year since they had to say goodbye to their son.

I attend a mothers' bereavement group once a month.  Wonderful women who walk this same journey and "know" in a way no one else possibly can.  Last month there were two new members.  This is of course a group where you hate to welcome new members because it means another mother has buried her child.  One of these moms whose loss was very recent tearfully asked "does it get better?"  Part question, part plea.  We've all asked it.  Some of these moms are several years into this journey and offered their thoughts.  Basically, no, it does not get better.  It gets different.  You learn to function.  One put it in a way that was absolutely perfect.  I don't remember the exact words, but she said in effect it's like you start living two parallel lives, as if you're simultaneously on two side by side train tracks.  One track is living in The World with everyone else, doing the normal things of work, grocery shopping, socializing, etc. and AT THE EXACT SAME TIME you're also living in this other world of unspeakable pain.  Two parallel lives on two parallel tracks. 

So, on one track, we put the Christmas tree up, shop, wrap, bake, send cards, eventually stop switching the radio station when the Christmas song comes on and "celebrate" as it were.  I'll be honest, it's all quite forced.  Not that we don't enjoy getting together with family and close friends.  We really do.  But on that other track all we feel is the emptiness of another Christmas without our (son/daughter.)  The wrongness of it all.  The desire to just get it over with for another year. 

So as I spend another year on the two tracks myself I can tell  you it ain't no fun whatsoever!  The world of "unspeakable pain" is real and there is nothing legal to take to make it STOP!!  I will always be on two tracks for the rest of my life...that in itself is something extremely hard to wrap my mind around. 

And finally this....

“... If the dead can come back to this earth and move unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the garish day and in the darkest night—amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours—always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or if the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.”  ~Paul Hoffman

Another Christmas Eve Without You

There are no words to describe the pain of losing your child. No words to describe the painful reality that they will never be a part of this physical world ever again. 

On this, our fourth Christmas without Nickolas, I am longing for my son to be here with us.  My heart cries out for him every day and there is no answer...only the silent echoes of pain and loss. 

I sit alone here with the undecorated, unlit tree that was dragged down from the attic by Glenn and Sara.  They didn't decorate it, they don't even plug it in.  I don't know why they brought it down. The holiday has never been the same since I sat here in terror wondering if Nick's last Christmas would be his last....I wanted to be wrong so badly.  When I went to my brother's house for a family gathering yesterday, I was taken aback by the stark contrast between our homes.  It seems like the grief is palpable here....it colors everything we do and say and feel.  I don't know how to change it...I don't know if I want to....I don't know anything. 
                                 I am lost.      I am lost.      I am lost.

“How could you go about choosing something that would hold the half of your heart you had to bury?”  ~Jody Picoult

“My sister will die over and over again for the rest of my life. Grief is forever. It doesn't go away; it becomes a part of you, step for step, breath for breath. I will never stop grieving Bailey because I will never stop loving her. That's just how it is. Grief and love are conjoined, you don't get one without the other. All I can do is love her, and love the world, emulate her by living with daring and spirit and joy.”  ~Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere

“Adam is crying and somewhere inside of me I am crying, too, because I'm feeling things at last. I'm feeling not just the physical pain, but all that I have lost, and it is profound and catastrophic and will leave a crater in me that nothing will ever fill.”  ~Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“In time, in time they tell me, I'll not feel so bad. I don't want time to heal me. There's a reason I'm like this.
I want time to set me ugly and knotted with loss of you, marking me. I won't smooth you away.
I can't say goodbye.” ~ China Mieville, The Scar

I love you always and forever my sweet boy.  Please come home soon.  Mom xo

Malady of the Soul

With what a deep devotedness of woe
I wept thy absence - o'er and o'er again
Thinking of thee, still thee, till thought grew pain,
And memory, like a drop that, night and day,
Falls cold and ceaseless, wore my heart away! ~Thomas Moore

I have no words to say what I want to say, to describe what is my day-to-day existence. 
Doesn't seem to matter anyway.
Another holiday season is here...the pain clings to my soul like the grip of death that stole my son from me.