love

I just laid in my bed (almost) all day….not such a good plan, but every time I would get out I would just feel so awful I would climb back in.  It was despair- deep, dark, heavy, painful, heart wrenching despair.  My heart felt like it weighed 500 pounds.  I could not see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I could not even see an end to the tunnel.

I wonder, so often, how people get through this.  I wonder equally often how such pain is even humanly possible because I feel as if the heaviness will just make my heart stop beating.

As I lay in bed I wanted to feel close to Lucas, which is not often, strangely because it hurts too much.  As far away as I can stay to that “closeness” the better.  Yet I had this longing to read the texts we had sent to each other, almost just to convince myself that I could do it.

So I did.  I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled through, “tell Rich to start dinner” and many many “what time do you want me to pick you up” texts.  Then I got to the ones where I was pestering him to find his coat.  I had bought him a brand new coat this year, not a cheap one, and he had lost it.  As a mother, I felt this was a big problem.  There were “did you check the bus”, “did you check every class”, “did you check the office again?” It went on and on.  It was such a big deal to me.  He felt very badly about it.  Very. Badly.  As the mom of a teenager I thought would be in my life forever, I continued to berate him about losing the $200 coat.  He kept telling me over and over, “the old north face is fine.  I don’t need a new one.  Its fine.  Its fine.  Its fine.” It was a lighter weight spring-ish version he had had for two years.  I ended up buying him another new one.  It is hanging in our closet having been worn once.  The day he died he was wearing the old north face coat.

It didn’t matter.  It didn’t matter at all.  Coats don’t matter.

I also had gotten on his case about shoes.  I had bought him brand new shoes as part of his christmas present.  I had hinted very obviously about this fact yet he went and bought new ones with his grandma when he was there for the weekend.  I was pissed.  I went off on him over text, for no particular reason, it seems, other than the fact that I had picked out these cool ones and I didn’t like the ones he had picked.  The gorgeous bright blue and green tennis shoes that I bought him are now in our garage in a bin with his backpack, untouched, waiting. Worn less than a month.  For…what?  I don’t know.

It didn’t matter.  It didn’t matter at all. Tennis shoes don’t matter.

I did find these two texts.

My sweetheart.  My wonderful boy.  My pain is as deep as the love I had for him.  I am going to learn from him like I hope others do as well.  Learn to love like Jesus.  Unconditionally.

John 13:34-35