Since you’ve been gone

It’s that time of year again, when my social media memories become inundated with hospital posts and updates. The memories serve as a play by play of what would be 4 months of peaks and valleys, victories and defeats.

The 4 month narrative that ended on Christmas Day as I told my son I loved him and said goodbye for the last time. Yet, that’s not where the story ends. As with anyone who has experienced loss the moments bleed into the days that turn into weeks, into years. The tears of loss sting a little more than normal tears, the emptiness is all encompassing.

We are going on 6 years, and the old saying time heals all wounds still remains a blatant lie. What time does is offer a healthy dose of perspective and distance. Distance from the raw emotion, and distance from the intensity of the loss. What I have also found is that I remember more of the good times now, more of the smiles and the laughs. Those memories aren’t being choked out by the hurt and loss.

Initially I thought grief was like a task that I had to work through, getting from point A to point B. Working through the emotions as you would a set of directions. What I feel like I have found is that the grief journey is less task and more simply a part of who I am.

After almost 6 years One thing I know for sure is that grief is not a straight line. It’s full of ups and downs. Moments of healing and moments of tears. Wrestling with the intense pain of loneliness while simultaneously remembering those memories of joy.

The memories transform as does the emotion surrounding the journey. I will never stop cherishing who he was and the life he lived. I am honored to have been his Dad.

Shaped by the pain

Shaped by the pain

Everyday brings a new memory, a thought, a photograph, a blog post. Everyday is a memory two years removed. Everyday I am still shaped by the pain, shaped by the moments that still stop my breath. It’s a gauntlet, a brutal reminder of the uncertainty and moments that pushed me to the edge. I melt as I look at the pictures and memories.

The pain continues to shape me, it constantly flows through my being creating new crevasses and caverns where none existed before. I have said it before I am a broken mosaic, a man trying to piece himself back together. I identify with the pain knowing its my reality, while at the same time casting a gaze to a better place as I remember the good and precious times.

I slowly creep towards December 25th, knowing what that day will forever mean witching my soul. I am being shaped by the pain, but I fight for what is good. I fight for the memories that bring tears to my eyes and a smile like no other.

Everyday is a two year anniversary of something, and everyday I battle to avoid falling into the darkened of grief. That’s the thing about grief, at least the way I see it. You choose to grieve in the shinning memory of hope or the pain and darkness. I will never undo the scars left while being shaped by the pain, but I choose to live in the hope. In the memory of a child full of life and joy. I choose that. I know the darkness’s and the pain will continue to come, and I know they will continue to shape me.

Sb

Over a year has passed

I have become accustomed to tearing up in the strangest places these days. Sometimes with fair warning and other times with no warning at all. It’s not that I’m out of control, but that I will be so caught by a memory, by a moment, by a reminder I connect with so deeply and that raw emotion just emits forth.

Over a year has passed since max passed away, and I don’t know how I feel. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be through the grieving process, if I’m supposed to be healed and whole. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be, but I’m here. I’m at this spot. An unidentifiable, unmarked place, desolate place. Somewhere between a complete wreck and completely healed, that’s where I am. The pain still stings, but less than days in the past. My eyes still fill with tears of sorrow, but much less frequently than before. I’m still a broken man, but I am walking a bit taller than before.

I am more optimistic than before, and I think that’s a good thing. Hope exists where barren fields of despair had taken up residency. It’s not that the hurt is gone, but it no longer consumes. The pain is no longer the central focus of my days.

The greatest honor I can give to Max is to live my life with passion, with hope and with purpose. To live a life that honors who he was, the role he played in my life and with the spirit that he lived with.

SB

Max’s Stocking 

“What do we do with Max’s stocking.” It was a simple question that I could hardly get out. The words fell out more than they were spoken. Tears almost pushed the words forward in an effort to escape.  
I didn’t really want to decorate this year, but Gracie said she really wanted to have the house decorated…. so the house got decorated. It was was the inside that I was haunting me the most. I knew the tree had to go up, stockings would need to be hung, and that’s where the proverbial rubber would meet the road. Where decisions would have to be made, do we put this one or that one up or would that one or this one cause too much heartache.  
(But seriously what the hell do I do with this stocking) 
I knew this was coming, I’ve know it for months that I would have to face it. The season that has brought so much joy, has turned on me facing me as if mocking me. Calling me, as if daring me to wade into its murky waters. Can I hold it together for 4-5 weeks… can I put on a mask of joy if only for a little while? That question is much harder to wrestle with than one might think.  
(I still don’t know what I’m doing with this stocking, my deceased sons stocking… what do I do with this stocking?) 
The lights are lit outside, and inside the tree is up and decorations are starting to fill the house. Tears fall as I continue to get choked up as this process carries on.  
Yet I sit alone in a room full of people and wrestle with the question, what to do with Max’s stocking 

No longer what I was 

I am no longer what I once was. For years I was the parent of a son with cerebral palsy, the parent of a son that I pushed day in and day out in a wheel chair. I was a man gutting out life, playing the cards he was dealt… scratch that, embracing the cards he was dealt. I am not that man anymore, I’m not going through life like that anymore. I see the parents pushing their child in a wheel chair, and I emotionally take a hit as I think of myself in that same position. Yet I know that’s no longer my journey. The news cycle ticks on, day by day getting further from those fateful hours. Life has taken a new rhythm, but the wounds are still fresh and raw refusing to become scars of a battle once waged.  

I march forward cloaked in countless memories, I was shaped by those years, and I was broken in that moment when those last breaths were taken. Which leads to the molding process that takes place today. Death takes its time until suddenly it doesn’t. The emotional wreckage scattered and strewn about, and the cleanup brings a man looking into the darkness. Into the darkness of anger and the internal hollowness such loss surely brings. I was most scared of losing myself in the darkness, falling in so far that retreat became impossible. Alas so far so good, as I believe I have kept from losing myself through this chapter of my story.