Fear

Ahhhh the woe of sleepless nights…

It is only 11:40 PM, but I have been in bed for two hours.  I am tired but my brain simply won’t settle down. I don’t want it to think. I want it to sleep. It hurts when it thinks.

I have been trying to reacquaint myself with instagram.  I haven’t used it in over a year.  I am just an oldie who is stuck on facebook.  I go on and see a picture that Lucas had tagged me in a long time ago and I so just naturally go to his page.  As I am doing it I almost feel like a person who cuts themselves to feel better.  Isn’t that a strange analogy? I know how deeply painful but somehow satisfying it will be.  Except the painful far outweighed the satisfaction.  I don’t know how many actual videos there are of Lucas out there, I haven’t really sought them out; we are kind of bad parents that way.  I never take videos.  There are probably quite a few older ones thanks to my parents and the good old video camera, but recent ones? I don’t know.

I do however know of the ice bucket challenge video on his instagram page.  I forgot it existed.  I watched it again. I didn’t even have the audio on, I couldn’t bear to hear his voice.

If I could pick one single thing that has caused the most pure unadulterated anguish since the day we buried him… it is watching a video of him.  In the flesh (so to speak) moving and talking and…alive.

That was without audio-  add that and I think I would be laying in fetal position on the floor.  For months.

Have you ever cried for hours? Its really exhausting and painful.  I used to just cry in spurts, like 5 or 10 minutes, really hard and then try to pick myself up and move on.

Now it just doesn’t stop.  Hours and hours, as if each day he has been gone produces a gallon of tears.

There are many things in life I have not experienced.  Sickness, for example.  Cancer.  Homelessness.  Persecution.  Hunger.

For some reason I am obsessed with thinking about these things and wishing God had just given me those (even all of them) instead of taking my child.  You can go ahead and get mad at me if you have experienced them and think I’m being stupid.

I don’t really know what they are like.  I do know loneliness, depression, relationship issues, body image issues, and the brutal chopping off of a piece of my being- my child.  I would trade anything in the world for him.  Anything.  Anything. ANYTHING!!!!!!

So….I am still in the bargaining phase apparently.  After a year.  I am also still in PTSD mode.  I am still “I can’t look your handsome face” mode.  I am still in “I can’t celebrate your birthday by having german chocolate cake” mode.

I did however go into his room yesterday.  For the first time in 12 months.  It was for maybe 30 seconds.  Things did not look the same.  We had a roof leak in his room (of course) so the furniture was all moved around and wonky.  Yet there were HIS clothes on the bed and HIS stuff in the closet and HIS stuff on the walls and HIS baseball trophies on his dresser.

I don’t know why I went in.  I went downstairs to look for something.  His door was open (it has been closed up until a couple weeks ago when it leaked) and I just walked in.  It was kind of an out of body experience.  I came back upstairs.  Brady was playing  with cars.  I laid on the floor by him and tried to pretend I wasn’t crying.  I made a feeble attempt at building  with his building blocks.  I tried so hard to keep the sobs in.  Finally I said, “Brady do you want to cuddle in bed with mommy?”

Thank goodness he agreed.  He promptly fell asleep so I could let out the grief that had been building inside me.

We had an incredible sermon on Sunday at Ada Bible, part of a series entitled “When you feel like giving up.”

Talk about appropriate.  I go between “I can’t do this I’m giving up” to “I really really have to do this” about every five minutes.

Jeff talked a lot about fear, which I didn’t think applied to me.  Then he started talking about the fear of living with something in your life that doesn’t have a happy ending.  Bingo.  I know that my grief will not have a happy ending nor will it ever go away.  It will always be a part of my life until my dying breath and there is no cure.  No solution.  No way out.  So yes,  that does bring me fear.  I do fear the future and enduring days, weeks, years, decades without Lucas. Fear is a very real part of grief for me, I just call it anxiety.

The main “character” so to speak in the sermon was Ed Dobson.  I had not realized he passed away Dec. 26.  He was a friend of Jeff’s and they had stayed in touch in the past years as Ed had deteriorated of ALS.

A clip was shown of Ed being interviewed as he was becoming more advanced in his disease. He was having a difficult time getting words out.  The interviewer asked, “how did you feel when you were first diagnosed and you read about all the terrible symptoms and the deterioration and pain you were about to go through?”

Ed responded “I was terrified.  It consumed me.  I could not stop thinking about what was ahead.  So every time I was afraid I would say Hebrews 13:6. I would say it over and over and over and over until I started to believe it.  At first I didn’t.  But after five minutes or so of repeating it, I did.”