Christmas 2016

I wish you were here.
I wish we could be sitting by this tree.
I wish I did not have this heaviness in my heart.
I wish my emotional trauma over losing you did not trigger me to get angry and lash out.
I wish I didn't have this empty place in my heart.
I wish I wasn't feeling so numb right now.
I wish I could drink my problems away.
I wish I could make people understand how painful this feels.
I wish I didn't want to scream at the top of lungs until someone heard me.
I wish things were different.
I wish people weren't so cruel.
I wish my childhood sexual abuse hadn't turned me into this person sitting here right now.
I wish I hadn't lost who I was when I was permanently scarred by my perpetrator.
I wish I had a brain that was wired normally, instead of trauma.
I wish I could explain how it feels to lose one of my children.
I wish I didn't see everything through the lens of abuse and loss and grief and pain.
I wish I could stop hurting.
I wish this holiday was over because I am so sad and nothing makes it stop hurting.
I wish I could just run away.
I wish I didn't feel like I don't deserve to be happy.
I wish I understood why life is so unfair.
I wish I understood how I am supposed to be ok with my son being dead.
I wish I wasn't (insert any bad character flaw here).
I wish I could go back and have a do over.
I wish I could have my son back in my arms.
I wish I knew why stuff like this has to happen.
I wish I could understand how I will ever be anything but sad for the rest of my life.

“Sadly, like many times in life, including winning the lottery, we don’t always get what we wish for.” 
― Adele Rose

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”    ~Henry David Thoreau

“Everything you have said will not matter anymore one day, only those things that you never said will always haunt you and strangle you every time you see your world in someone else's hand.” 
― Akshay Vasu

My Sweet Birthday Boy

Today you are supposed to be thirty-four years old.
Today you are supposed to be living your life.
Today I am supposed to be living my life too.
Today I am supposed to be celebrating the birth of my first child.
Instead, I am grieving the death of my first child, seven years ago.
There is nothing that will ever happen with you now or ever.
It makes me so angry.
It makes me so sad.
I want to feel something besides anger and sadness.  I love you my sweet boy.  I love you more than words can say.  I am tired of writing on this blog about all the times and dates we are missing you since you left us.  So very tired....most days I cannot figure out a reason to go on.  As far as I can tell, no one understands that...no one even knows that is how I feel most days.  The only reason I stay here is for your sister.  I thought something was going to change my life for the better, but that didn't work out.  So the darkness is closing around me again.  I don't think I will be able to make it out again.  Time keeps running away from me.  It goes so fast...

“I kneel in the nights before tigers that will not let me be. what you were will not happen again. the tigers have found me and I do not care.”    ~ Charles Bukowski

"The days run away like horses over the hills."  ~ Charles Bukowski

Seven Years Sad

Another marker on this path.
I have been walking for so long.
I am tired and forlorn.
I keep hoping the journey will soon be over.
I cannot find my way out of the darkness.
I approach the marker to read what it says...
"Seven Years today...August 13, 2009 - August 13, 2016"
I guess I never thought I would make it this far.
People used to say, "I don't know how you do it," or, "If I lost my child, I wouldn't be able to go on."  
Well, I don't have a choice.
I go on...dragging myself through the quicksand of grief as best I can.  Some days seem like they will  never end, the sorrow pulling me down like an anchor, choking the life from me. Some days I just have to stop and rest. When I do stop, I pray the muck of this grief doesn't suffocate me while I am trying to catch my breath. Some days there is a cool breeze and I can imagine it is my sweet boy nudging me onward, telling me, "you can do it Mom.  I love you Mom."  Some days there is only the deafening silence of the vacuum created by the absence of my sweet boy.  Those days are dark and there seems to be no reason to keep struggling against this demon of sadness and loss.
While some aspects of my grief have changed, I still have the overwhelming desire to run away and start a new life.  A life without sadness and pain.  A life where no one knows I lost my most precious son.  A life where the weight of this sorrow is lifted from my body and I can finally breathe again.  I have so many questions and not many answers.  Losing Nickolas changed everything...my world as I knew it was shattered.  My life was forced into a new and unwanted trajectory.  I don't know where I am going or why.  I know I am hurting...still.  I don't believe it will ever stop hurting.  I am tired of being in pain.  I am tired of being sad.  I cannot remember the last time I was truly happy.  I wonder if  I will ever feel joy in my heart again.  Sometimes it feels really hard to keep moving on this path. There is a deep sense of sadness and despair that clings to my heart and soul even as I continue to search for light in the darkness of this grief.

“Because what’s worse than knowing you want something, besides knowing you can never have it?” 
― James Patterson

“The bravest thing I ever did was continuing my life when I wanted to die.” 
― Juliette Lewis

“She felt the depth of her losses before they were realized, and she wondered, Is there still hope? Did she even dare hold on to such a tenuous thing as hope?” 
― Sage Steadman

New Year Baby 2016

As another year begins without you Nickolas, I have nothing new to say.  Every year at this time, the memories of your last days here on earth haunt me.  It was between Christmas and New Year's in 2008 that we found out your BMT had failed and your leukemia had come back.  The devastation of that day...how bad you were feeling before they figured out what was going on...how bad we all felt knowing that the "new year" wasn't looking to bright for you and therefore, not for any of us.  I remember spending that New Year's Eve in a hospital room at Hopkin's trying to put a "good" face on the evil that was cancer.  I sat there with you and tried not to burst into a rage of anger and fear...watching you try to eat when you felt so bad. I remember it feeling very, very sad. And so today when I was in the book store looking for a book of poetry for you Dad's birthday, I stumbled upon this poem by Charles Bukowski.  And I read the whole poem and thought to myself, yes, yes...this is exactly it.  This is how I have felt since the day we got that phone call telling us you had leukemia.  I am so sorry my dear sweet son that you are not hear to celebrate with us and therefore, it seems I cannot celebrate either.   One happy memory I have of you and New Years'...I remember Nana told you about the New Year's baby coming down the rainbow at midnight and when you were little you were always looking for that baby.  You are my baby and I love you with all my heart and I will miss you until I take my last breath.  My heart is forever broken my sweet boy.  Please come home soon so I can hug your neck.  I love you more than a wagon full uf puppies.

with his awful teeth - Charles Bukowski

this dog Sadness is gnawing at me
again.
I sit in this room with a big hole
chewed in my
side.
all I want are some gentle moments
to fall like soft
raindrops.
they will not arrive.
this dog Sadness is a persistent
mongrel.
he finds me so often these days,
again and again.
he is here with me now.
"go on," he growls, "write your
poem about me,
it won't make me go
away."
he's right.
I stop and look at my
wristwatch,
follow the second hand around and around.
it leads me nowhere.
I am trapped here with this sad dog.
I make small movements,
light a cigarette,
rattle a box of
paper clips.
nothing changes.
this dog of Sadness
continues to
sit here with
me,
feeding greedily.
he is getting quite
fat.
you want a pet,
my friend?
I'll give him to you right
now
along with this
poem!
if only
you would
be kind enough to
take him away,
this
Sad
dog.