Happy birthday

 You loved nature.  Just like your first birthday last year we spent it in the same place with your tree.  Of course this is not the same tree since the organization was negligent and didn’t take care of it. Just a few days ago they planted a bur oak in its place. We all agreed it’s a bit gnarly looking but our son would love it.  

We saw a salamander which isn’t common to see and our youngest daughter moved him off the trail so he wouldn’t get stepped on.  He was moving very slow for some reason.  We saw a hawk and it let us walk onto the platform before it flew away.  I see something new every time and I walk every holiday there.  I walk because it makes me feel close to him out in nature.  Feeling the sun on my face is like him smiling at me.  I now walk as often outside as I can.  

I love you kod.  I never imagined I wouldn’t see you turn 30 and that’s next year. And that shadow I’m sure I saw walk in front my tv last night…..was that you?  It was so much shorter than you.  You would have towered over the tv but maybe you’re different there?  Know we love you still and miss you.  Sometimes more than my heart and mind can handle and today was definitely exhausting with emotion that burst at the seams.  

Holidays and Grief with Faith

This.  This is so conflicting in my human brain sometime.  How do I have faith that God exists while grieving a child?  During the holidays amplifies all of it.  I can literally be fine one second and questioning everyone’s very existence the next.  Smiling and then thoughts settle in that turn that smile fake.

I do believe in God.  Spirituality is confusing, but something I have to maintain to have any peace in my life.  And these days I yearn for peace.  Without spirituality how am I supposed to believe that when I dream of my son they’re real?  I’ve only had those two dreams with him.  And let me tell you….there was nothing more real.  I don’t think my husband understood until this week.  He NEVER remembers his dreams while I remember most of mine.  We have talked about that often over the years.  But this time he said he stayed awake afterward to ensure he wouldn’t forget it.  He said our son walked into a room and said he was checking on how we were doing.  My husband told him we weren’t doing well. He said it’s okay and that he was okay.  My husband said that as our son left the room he turned back around to say “Chris says hello”.  Chris is a friend of my husbands that passed a few years ago.  The boys grew up with him as a sort of grandpa.  Hearing my husband tell me that story a few days ago really gave me some peace.  I made him repeat it a few times because it really made my heart feel better.

But as we talked about it he told me how it made him happy and sad all at the same time.  He finally understood what I had tried to explain after my dreams.  It makes you miss him so much more, but so happy that you had seconds with him one more time.  And getting to hug him and hear him in your dreams is a gift and a blessing.  Without spirituality how is this possible?  I don’t think it is.

I was so happy that night and felt like I was getting through this holiday a little better.  But as Christmas Eve progressed I started getting this feeling in me.  The pit of my stomach just felt off.  I tried to finish playing games with the kids and smiling through the rest of the night so it could be more of a normal Christmas for them.  But, by the time I woke up this morning, Christmas Day, I really could feel it all. I felt all of the weight of missing him.  I went for a walk with my husband and drug him around for 2 miles trying to feel better and more centered.  We came home and I still wasn’t okay so I walked again another 2 miles.  The rest of the day I have spent by myself.  I am no good to anyone on days like this.  

Days like this I sit in the quiet.  I binge deep shows and think about my own feelings of the world and what the meaning of life is.  Yes, I actually contemplate that but have no answers.  Even with so many days spent doing this since he left us.  All I do know is I want to be around my kids every chance I get and I pray they always make room for us because there’s not enough time left.  But I’ve also been looking at photos of my son when he was younger and wish I could hug that kid again and tell him it would all be okay.  

I know these days may not actually get better with time.  I’ll never really not feel a piece of me missing.  I can’t imagine that feeling.  I allow myself joy, but there will always be some pain in there too.  The kids are amazing and I hope they continue to grow through all of this.  They wrote letters to us for Christmas and they were beautiful.  Something we could keep, reread and hold onto forever.  That’s the best presents they could possible give us besides their presence.

Invisible

 Is being invisible a gift or a curse?

I know it’s been awhile.  I’ve stayed off of social media (closed my account) and tried to just decompress a bit and sit with the sadness or happiness of the day instead of allowing social media into my life to redirect my attention. But here we are; back at the holiday season.  

A month ago I would have told you I was doing okay.  Everything was tolerable and while I still think about my son every single day I didn’t feel like I couldn’t go to work or function.  Then, a couple of weeks ago Loki (our baby (cat)) got sick and suddenly died.  The vet doesn’t know what caused his issues.  Losing my best friend really hit hard.  I realized that night that he was the one that I went to.  He was always outside for me to talk to when humans didn’t notice my hurt or I just couldn’t talk to them.  He got me through those awful days when we lost our son.  He kept me company every time I was outside; following me around when I gardened or sitting on the side of the pool when it was only me swimming.  He was my person!

And with the holidays drawing in fast I’m starting to feel like I did last year which I didn’t think I would.  I have found that most often when I finally get up the nerve to put my pride aside and reach out to someone to talk in my moments of utter pain they’re too busy.  I’m invisible.  Sometimes it means that I can just sneak past you in the grocery store so I don’t have to pretend to be okay and that’s to my benefit.  But sometimes I do want someone to notice that I’m in pain and just need that shoulder.  I don’t have that shoulder.  I can’t find one that will always be there.

I feel very alone.  No one in my entire (extended included) family understands what this feels like and no one wants to acknowledge I’m still deep in grief.  I pretend most of the year, but I just can’t sometimes.  It’s exhausting.  I mean think about it…..just to be productive at work I have to pretend 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, 8 hours a day.  That’s a lot of being fake and I was never really good at that.

My son visited in my dream this week.  I hugged him so hard that when I woke up, in the middle of it, I was crying for real and I swear I could still feel my arms around his waist.  It was always his waist because he was too tall to hug otherwise.  I’m a whole foot shorter.  He talked to me, but this time it wasn’t as clear.  The only thing that was was that he told me he was watching me at the grocery store but couldn’t let me know he was there.  These are all I have left of him.  Memories of dreams.  Memories that I have to write down in order not to lose. No pictures to capture.  Just what I can recover from my brain in the early hours of the day while I’m still a little incoherent and foggy.

Losing Loki, dreaming of my son and the holidays coming so quickly are like the perfect storm of emotions that I can’t control or fathom what to do with.  Add that into my mother-in-law being, normal, and hurting me at every turn she can.  You would think after 31 years of her obvious discourse for me (maybe even hate) I would let it go, but she won’t stay out of our lives so she gets to continue to jab.  Invisibility would be nice there, wouldn’t it?

My sweet baby…..Cole take care of this one.  He was pretty great.

You either laugh or cry

 

I’ve been bracing myself for March.  Not just the crazy winds we’ve had but the storms that I have been expecting for many months.  I’ve been cleaning like crazy and doing all of the other crazy OCD tendency type things in preparation. That is just how I deal with stress. 

We’ve been preparing for tomorrow’s special day. The girls came home from college for it and the youngest comes home saying something happened to his ankle at track and he looked it up and seemed to be achilles related.  

I googled as well and then remembered the single tidbit of info they gave us on his birth father and that was that he ruptured his Achilles running track. Such a weird little detail to be the only thing they shared with us. The coach said he would have the school trainer look at it Monday but we decided given the possible family history and the fact that you have to wrap the foot specific for this injury, I took him to the ET.  

They did an X-ray and of course saw no breaks.  I mentioned why I brought him in and they listened. They got an ultrasound in there and there it was. It’s hanging on by maybe one fibrous thread.  He has a ruptured Achilles tendon.  

So he is wrapped and on crutches with an appointment with the orthopedic next Wednesday. Assuming real cast st that point.  I guess our year of all this crap started 3/24/24 when we lost our oldest and had no plans on letting us end it quietly.  

All if have left in me is to laugh!

Understanding more

 Every day. 

Last year today someone I knew,  not well, had a son who died in an accident.  I posted the obligatory hugs and I’m sorry when she posted on Facebook and thought about her off and on for a week or so.  

Then my son died 4 weeks later.  Many many people did the same thing I supposed.  Hugs, I’m sorry flooded my feed and they quickly moved on with their lives even going as far as to happily ask how things are going when they bumped into us shortly after forgetting for a little bit what we had been through.  It’s such a luxury to forget.  It’s such a blessing to never feel this. 

This pain that wanes.  This pain that goes away from time to time but comes back with a vengeance making you jealous of everyone around you that has never felt like this.  This pain that makes you want to go back into time or move forward years hoping it feels a lot better but knowing it wouldn’t.  This pain that makes you analyze every relationship you have and if it’s still worth your time any longer.  This pain that truly let you know who your real friends and family are.  In our family blood never made anyone family so just because you are related by blood if you don’t treat us like family then you don’t get to be treated like family.  

She and I have become pretty good friends over the past year   Understand what only she and I can commiserate on.  We agreed to have lunch sometime between the dates for our boys. The plan is to come over tomorrow on our day off and I’ll make is a lunch sometime between we can talk and possibly cry in peace. I’m looking forward to more than just our usually late night messages to each other.  But I know it will be rough on her since her week is now.  

Dates

 We’ve taken a step back. With grief in your life you re-evaluate everything. Especially relationships. We’re working on us. We’ve been married 30 years and we been been through too much. It’s all taken a toll. We got a daily devotional for couples that helps us pray with each other and think about each other more purposely. 

It’s worth a try.  If you want to know the link I’ll share.

Small changes

 

Between menopause and grief I’m battling something daily.  And they both affect your mood. Before all of my procedures I had decided to exercise more consistently.  During the cooler months I’m bad about putting on flannels and camping on the couch so I was doing really well. Then in recovery I got accustomed to that all over again. 

I inched back into it two months after the first surgery and have been reading about health more. I’m trying to be better about eating protein and getting steps in in addition to come strength. Though I’m sure anyone who really works out, like two of my kids do, it’s pretty lightweight.  But I’m focused on consistency while working myself up a little at a time. I’m only doing 6-7000 steps per day right now and trying to find healthy snacks to eat more frequently. 

These blueberry muffins are, well, a little flat but really good. I tweaked the recipe because it called for 1/2 cup of sugar and that just negated any of the healthiness of the recipe. I did re-add maybe a tablespoon of sugar and now it tastes like blackberry pie pound cake.  So good!  I’ve been trying to eat Greek yogurt for more protein and calcium but the only flavor I like is lemon meringue pie and only one Walmart sells it and it’s 45 minutes away. Super bummer.  Hopefully I’ll see it working in a couple of months but I feel it for now.  I feel less stressed and more relaxed every night.  I’ll take that small win.

Here’s the recipe if you want to try the muffins. 

• 1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
• 1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce 
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup plain whole milk cottage cheese
• 2 eggs
• 1.5 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 cup fresh blueberries, tossed in flour

Preheat oven to 375°.  I just mix all of the ingredients together and bake in silicone muffin pan for 25-30 minutes.