On my heart

I don’t think I have ever sat down to the computer to blog feeling this overwhelmed about what to write.  I feel like I have described my pain in every possible way, ever angle, every description, every analogy…

Yet it still comes back no matter how many times I let it all out.  It will never leave.

Yesterday I changed my profile picture to one of Lucas fishing when he was probably 11, I’m guessing, and the big ugly salty heart wrenching tears I cried while looking at that picture…if you’ve never cried so hard you couldn’t breathe you’ve never really cried.

I called my husband after coming back from an appointment because the entire drive I was bawling and just couldn’t get a handle on it and the kids were about to come home from school.  I told him in between gasps that I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t take the pain anymore, I was waving the white flag, I was just done.

Which is of course completely meaningless.  I was just dreaming and hoping that there was a way out…a way to be free of it… a way to anesthetize it.

He is on my mind day and night.  I think “I wish Lucas was here” every time I have 1 child clinging to my leg crying and two fighting and one asking for homework help while I have chicken burning on the stove.  Every time I feel like I need a hug. Every time I see or think about a person around his age and I think, what would be he doing right now.   Every time I think about my family of 6 that’s supposed to be a family of 7 and its just not right. NOT RIGHT NOT RIGHT NOT RIGHT NOT RIGHT.

You don’t realize how often people ask about your kids or how many kids you have.  You don’t realize how hard it is to tell strangers that your oldest son is in heaven.  Not that its so hard to say (which it is) but that don’t know what to say.  So they kind of just nod or mutter they are sorry.  Its awkward.  But I will not tell anyone, ever, that I have four children.  It’s simply not true.  Maybe I should say I have 5 and leave it.  But I feel the need to qualify it.  I just can’t help it.

I CANNOT look at a picture of him, any picture without that knife twisting in my gut feeling.  I cannot look at his smile and be happy.  I feel agony.  Pure, unadulterated agony.   Every time.  I quickly avert my eyes as if it will make it easier but the image is still imprinted on my brain.

Nine months tomorrow.  Nine months since I have seen his precious face and hugged his tall lanky muscular frame and teased him about his blonde chin hair. I still have not stepped in his room since the day of his funeral. I have not been to his grave.  I can’t.  I just can’t.

I had to pick out his gravestone on Monday.  I had to pick out a marker for my fifteen year old son’s grave.  Is there anything more awful?  I was absolutely sick walking past all the colors and shapes and textures and thinking, what difference does it make? It only matter that he is gone and that is horrible and shitty and I never want to see where he is buried.  I cannot, cannot cannot think about him in a casket.  I want to be sick.  There is nothing worse.

I have one leg in the real world and one leg in hell.  The mental hell of mourning and grief and feeling consumed by loss.  The one leg in the real world has a heck of a time balancing without that other leg.  But I try.  I really try.  Some people think it’s not good enough.  That that other leg needs to come back to the real world.  Yet it’s mired in.  It’s deep in the mud.  There’s an inch for every ounce of love I have for him.  That doesn’t want to let him go.  There is an inch for every piece of me that died with him.

I ask people why they read my blog and they say it helps them understand how to deal with people who have lost.

This is how it feels.

Do not judge the bereaved mother. She comes in many forms.
She is breathing, but she is dying.
She may look young, but inside she has become ancient.
She smiles, but her heart sobs.
She walks, she talks, she cooks, she cleans, she works, she IS,
but she IS NOT, all at once.
She is here, but part of her is elsewhere for eternity.”

-Author Unknown-