Never alone

It’s been just over six weeks and it is still so early. So fresh. I still, as crazy as it sounds feel like he just might walk through the door one of these afternoons around 3:00.  Maybe it doesn’t sound nutty at all.  After all I had him for fifteen years.  How does one’s brain catch on to that? We are so accustomed and familiar with life. Life is familiar and second nature.  Comings and goings.  Meals, activities, games, outings, gatherings, sitting at home doing homework.  Life.  Doing Life.

Then it stops for one of our own. One of the fold. A treasured piece of the puzzle.  A precious son.

I saw every part of it, every horrible part and I still don’t really believe it.  In my heart of hearts as his mommy I still don’t really believe it.

How can we be good with this? Ever? That is what I am questioning today.  Every day.

We are not good with death.  I am not good with death.  Is anyone?  What a foreign, awful concept that there is no Lucas sitting at my kitchen table and eating dinner with us.  That he’s not sitting on my couch talking to his friends on his iphone.  He’s not practicing baseball. He’s not sitting in class taking notes. He’s not where he is SUPPOSED to be.  HE’S NOT THERE.

I struggle, I really struggle with thinking about him in heaven not because I don’t think he’s there but because I want him here more.  I can’t picture heaven, I don’t know heaven.  I don’t know what he looks like in heaven.  I don’t know if he can send messages to me from heaven.  I don’t know heaven.  I only know here.

I only know what he looked like eating sloppy joes at my dinner table that Thursday night.  I only know the appreciative look he gave the guy who gave him a haircut Thursday night.  He had gone to someone new and he raved about how precise and artistically he cut hair and how cool it was he was in a band.  He got a new hair product.  a really expensive one.  Then we went home and he went to do his homework and I went to bed.

Then like a stop button hit on a movie was his life over for me.  I didn’t see him the next morning until he was laying in the snow.  I was a lazy stupid mom and didn’t get up to see him off to school the next morning.  I didn’t give him a hug.  I only got to touch his lifeless arm and face and kiss his lifeless forehead at the hospital.

I know his “life” didn’t end there. I told 1200 people that at a basketball game.  I am just dealing with my humanness that I still want to be his mommy.  HERE.  Yes, I know I am still his Mom I just can’t cook him dinner or hug him or drive him to practice or talk about girls or school or friends or watch him play baseball.  That sure as hell doesn’t feel like a Mom.

God help me.  I know that this is going to a long hard struggle.  Probably for the rest of my life.  The more books I read, the more groups (mostly online) the more I realize that this is just not an event in your life, this DEFINES you.  How it defines you is up to you but there is no escaping the pain.  There is simply no escape.

Do I feel differently about the struggle and the pain because I have a God who loves me and shares the pain with me? Yes.

Every day I read Jesus Calling by Sarah Young.  March 5: “Make friends with the problems in your life.  Though many things feel random and wrong, remember that I am sovereign over everything. I can fit everything into a pattern for good, but only to the extent that you trust me…”

“I will not necessarily remove your problems but my wisdom is sufficient to bring good out of every one of them.”

Every day this book speaks to me and seems like it is just for the struggles I am having today.

I cry buckets of tears. Every day.  Yet I never feel alone.