This Life

Sometimes I think I am doing so well, and then one domino is nudged slightly off-kilter and the whole shebang comes tumbling down.  It has been not quite 5 and a half years since my new life began.  And only in the last six months did I feel like I was actually living it.  The waves of grief have been generously small.  Manageable.  I have poured every ounce of myself into getting back my body and my mind after five years of "otherness."  But today it just feels disingenuous to say I'm doing OK.  Today I don't feel it.  It feels like everything I've been working for is not quite real, and it can just be taken away in a moment.

Today a whole plethora of things went wrong.  Aden asked me why I don't have a brother or a sister in my belly.  Then he asked if we could go buy one at the store.  And it's so incredibly unfair that he doesn't have his brother.  And I hate it.  I told him we were going to have to be OK with just him and me and daddy.  He said, "Oh, is the store closed?"  My heart is crushed.

The novels that I have spent every spare second working on since April will have to be unpublished... probably in the next twenty-four hours, because one of my students came across it during my free book promotion.  It feels like I'm losing the one thing that was saving me.  Writing let me get out of my own head and put everything on paper.  It occupied my mind in a good way instead of a debilitating one.  I had an actual hobby.  I haven't had one of those in a long long time.  And now that's over.  Again, unfair, but it's what has to happen.

To speak some truth?  I haven't been to the cemetery since June.  I have never gone this long without going.  Around the fourth year of Owen being gone, it started to feel... like I wasn't going there because I felt close to him, but because I was supposed to.  When he was first buried, I 100% judged the parents of the babies who had no decoration on their stones. "How sad," I thought.  And now I am the biggest hypocrite of all.  Truth be told, I don't feel close to him there.  I don't really feel close to him anywhere.  I am missing my boy.  I am missing everything.  He's not there under that stone.  He's somewhere that I'm not and it's so unfair.  

Most days I'm fine, I'm good.  I like my job, and I love love love my family, and I have found freedom in writing.  But today... today was not a good day.  I can hope for tomorrow to be better.

Five Years Later

This Sunday marks five years since I saw my little fox's face for the first time.  The past five months have been the most healing part of my grief journey, and for that I am grateful.  After we lost Owen, I divided my life into pre-loss and post-loss.  Who I was then, who I am now.  They were not the same person, so this felt appropriate.

During the past several months, I have started to reconcile those two people again.  I am still the dramatic, anxious, funny, quick-witted person I was in my late teens and early twenties.  I am still Owen's mother.  I am still a loss mom.  I am still the mom of a beautiful three year old rainbow.  I am still the new person who doesn't take crap from people anymore.  I am still the new person who is not afraid to walk away from people when they no longer support or add to my purpose here.  But now I can say I'm me- one person.  Taking control my health and my body has given me back a sense of self that I had been missing for a long time.  It has improved my marriage, my overall outlook, my parenting, and my relationships.  Writing my book has also been such a cathartic stress release.  It feels like I've found my place.  I feel more comfortable in my own skin than maybe I ever have.

All of this being said, does that mean I'm "better"? Or "over it"?   Of course not.  My baby should be graduating from pre-school next week.  It's surreal.  Of course my stomach tightens when I get the kindergarten registration emails from my school district, when I see other kids in their tiny caps and gowns.  It's the reality of the situation.  The grief of losing my son will last my whole life.  I saw above quote today and it just grabbed me.  I wear it differently now, and yet some days I wear it like it was the day he died, though those days are fewer and further between.

I miss my boy every day.  I can see glimpses of our life as it would have been.  I also have joy, and laughter, and life filling my home.  Happiness, while not the pretty picture we all dream about when we begin our adult lives, no longer escapes me.  I can be happy and still walk with my grief.  Five years ago, that sentence could not have been fathomable.  And now it is.  My Owen Fox has made me a better, kinder, more compassionate person, and I can never repay him for what he has given me or for how hard he fought to be here.  But I will try to be a person he can be proud of and who he would be happy to call his mom.  <3 p="">

Approaching 5

The past couple of months have been difficult for me in terms of where I am in my grief.  I feel like other areas of my life have gotten brighter; I've begun to take control of my health and weight, my family relationships are strong, and I've started a new endeavor with ItWorks that I'm excited about.  That being said, there have been more nights lately that I've found myself crying in bed, angry at what has been lost.

This May will mark five years.  Year five feels like a weight right now.  Kindergarten.  Buying his backpack and lunchbox and first-day-of-school outfit.  I think the hardest hardest hardest part about 5, is that it feels like a passage from baby/toddler to full-fledged "kid," and I don't know Owen as a "kid".  I have no idea what he would look like, what his interests would be, what his strengths and challenges would be, his likes and dislikes.  It is the strangest form of longing to LOVE someone SO MUCH and not know who he is.  I can't explain it to non-loss parents.  The idea of it is too strange.  I try to envision Aden and Owen playing together- mostly fighting pretend dragons in the backyard as Aden loves to do, but the image is incomplete.  The only clear images I have are of an infant, and that's not true anymore.  This is hard.

Today I sat planning our small summer vacation.  I kept thinking and wishing that we had a closer network of friends with toddlers so we could plan something together and Aden would have someone to play with.  I started to get really upset about this, and finally came to the realization that I was just upset because he should have someone to play with already.  He should have a big brother and a best friend all of the time.  And you know what?  It's hard to make friends who have kids when one of mine is gone.  It just is.  I have made progress with this the past year since Aden has been in preschool and made some friends, so I guess I will just focus on that.

I guess I am coming to some sort of acceptance that we will not have any more children, and this wanting for Aden to have a sibling will just become part of my normal.  Though I was surprised (shocked) about becoming pregnant last October, I had visions of Aden as a big brother, and how he would be with his new sibling.  I started a "secret" Pinterest board of baby nurseries and pinned articles about bringing home a new sibling.  After that loss, I knew that mentally I could not survive another pregnancy that ended too soon, and seeing as how there are no guarantees, we decided that was it. Coming to grips with this decision has been a process, and I won't claim to be there 100% yet, but I feel like it's the right decision.

In the midst of all of this going on in my head, Aden brings light and love and joy to my heart every single day.  Where I would be without him is not a place I care to imagine.  I envision the next few months leading up to Owen's birthday to be difficult, but appreciate how fortunate I am to have my sweet rainbow here to make me smile.