Life

I think the hardest thing is knowing there is no foreseeable end to the pain in sight.  As I grow more and more comfortable talking about him to people- and in just living the daily life of “a mother who has lost,” the pain still just seeps deeper and deeper in my bones.

Lately it’s the feeling that every day that goes by I feel like I should be healing a little more but in reality I’m grieving a little more because its one more day since he lived in my house.  Slept in his bed.  Ate dinner with us.  He’s one more day further from us.  That was the most painfully obvious part of everyone else starting school- he didn’t.

I know I’m having another one of those one step back seasons right now.  It makes me wonder how progress is measured when you lose a child.  Will  I ever really step forward? What does that mean?

The fact that life goes on doesn’t mean progress to me.  It means putting on a brave face.  It means adjusting to the fact that your eyes might be red sometimes going into the grocery store or picking up your child from soccer.  It means just trying to put one foot in front of the other and keep some semblance of a life going for your family.  Staying afloat.  Trying really, really hard to enjoy the things that you once enjoyed.

There’s just so much ache though.  Every time I see a homecoming picture or talk of getting driver’s licenses- who are we kidding, anything that has to do with teenagers.  Anything to do with baseball.  Anything to do with hunting.  Talking about being tall.  Talking about high school and classes and grades and getting into college.  Every. Time. I go into a store I feel my heart grow heavy with pain at the sight of something that he would wear or eat or throw or shoot… basically LIFE reminds me of Lucas.

I sold candles at the Painted Farm girl Flea market yesterday.  It was amazing, fun, touching, tons of people; sold almost every candle. I met so many strangers who read this blog and were so sweet and encouraging and it felt SO GOOD.  I had my brave face on talking to people all day about my sons legacy.  How we are starting an organization to help bring youth together and scatter kindness.  To do service projects and missions across the world.  Explaining how my son’s heart just empowers and inspires me to do this thing and really put love into action.  Like he would do.  Like he would want.

Then I got in my car and cried, like so many other times, a soul wrenching guttural cry of a mother who has lost a piece of her.  Who feels so lost and hurt and desperate.  Just to see her boy and feel his warm skin and hug him so tight.  There is one thing to have this deep desire to carry out your son’s legacy and do something good with a terrible situation.  It is another to have empty arms and an empty bed in your house.

I don’t know that it will ever go away.  I just kept thinking about the contrasts last night as I tried to sleep.  That amazing feeling when you really share a part of yourself with someone and relate to them and that they are on this journey with you.  That people pray for you that you’ve never even met.  People seeing the LiveLikeLucas and taking your card and asking you what it means.  Feeling like you are touching lives.  So many highs.

Yet so many lows.  Then ironically someone sent me this:

Life is breathtakingly beautiful.  God given, God breathed life.  Whether its one day or ten years or fifteen or one hundred.  Every day is a gift.