Mother's Heartbreak

A Story of Addiction & Loss

Category: grief and your brain (Page 1 of 4)

Searching For Peace Among the Grief

September 25, 2026 /

Matt,  it’s been a while since I’ve written.   I’ve just felt so lost lately.   The summer has passed and I missed spending time at the beach our once favorite place.  It’s been a really tough summer for me physically.   The last bouts of radiation really did a number on my back.  Spasms and pain so bad it literally stopped me in my tracts.  So many days I was forced to take pain killers just to function.  On those days my mind drifted to you and what you went through right in front of my eyes. 

I feel like I am you.  Constantly in pain and constantly trying to get away from it.  My anxiety like yours has made some days worse as my mind goes to those dark places.  

Everyday is a fine balancing act.  Deciding what do I treat and what do I just deal with.  What’s worse today has become the question I ask myself daily.  Is the anxiety going to be the beast today or the relentless pain.  Which beast do I try to beat back and which beast do I let run rampant over my mind. 

Then I have a flashback of you walking like an old man and I feel my tears building.  I wish I understood then what I do now.  You were just looking for peace from your pain.  They say you never understand what someone else is living through until you live it too.   Well, Matt I get it.  There are days where I just want the pain to stop.  Days I just want my old body back before the cancer hit and slowly destroyed my ability to just be.  I took my health for granted.  Even as I watched you and argued over your pill use I never thought I could one day be in your shoes.  

 How I wish I could turn back the clock for both of us. To those carefree days when we were both happy and healthy.  The days of running on the beach with the dogs.  The days of laughter and sunset boat rides.  Days we both laughed until we cried.   God I miss what I foolishly thought would last forever.   I still can’t believe you’re not here.  You are the first person I want to talk to when the pain hits.  You are the only one who can understand how life can go from perfect to so damn hard in the blink of an eye.  I just wish I could see you for a minute.  I’d tell you how sorry I am for how you suffered from your injury.  I’d tell you how I wish I understood more and pushed you to do things less.  

So now your life has become mine.  I’m terrified of becoming addicted.  I’m terrified of what the future might hold for me.  I’m also terrified of living my life in constant pain unable to do and be what I did and who I was before.  

I pray you have found your peace.  That you are whole and healthy living on the most beautiful beach your eyes have ever seen.  It’s the one way to survive how life has become with you gone and me walking in your shoes.  So now I continue my balancing act choosing which demon to defeat on a daily basis as I also pray for peace.  

I also pray one day you will be waiting for me when I leave this earth.  I pray to see your beautiful face and hear your voice say hey Mom I’ll race you to the sea.  Forever in my heart.  

Grief…..

February 28, 2026 /

That are days when it just sneaks in. When you begin to feel its weight wrapping around your heart. When you feel that all familiar tightness in your throat and the cloak of heaviness wraps itself around your body and refuses to let go.

You try to understand what is happening. When you woke you felt ok. Then as the hours passed and a memory played in your mind your body reacted and remembered.

Grief is like an unexpected visitor. Like hearing that knock at your door when no one is supposed to be knocking. It doesn’t matter if you open your door, she seeps into the crevices and finds her way in.

You try to get away. To keep her at arms length. You didn’t plan on her visit, on your heart to feel like it’s being strangled and your breath to feel labored. You woke to a sunny day with beautiful blue skies but grief doesn’t care about the weather when she strikes. Grief is relentless and commanding.

Grief doesn’t count the years, she doesn’t care about the length of time that has passed. Grief has no time limit and she knows her power never lessens once she’s wrapped herself around your heart.

Grief never forgets where you live. She knows how to find you. A song, a memory, a glance at a photo. The sound of a hawk, or visit from a raven she knows your triggers and uses them well.

You try to keep busy. You clean, do laundry, walk the dog and all the while she holds on like a lost child refusing to let you out of her sight. She digs deeper into your soul until you are nothing but a mass of tears. You are drowning as the waves come with unexpected force. Pulling you into that abyss of darkness. Regret swallowing you as you struggle to remain afloat.

You finally give up and let grief have her way. Understanding that this fight will never be over. Some days she stays on the horizon but she never forgets that you loved a son who is now forever gone and your heart always has a place for her to exist…….

Grief has found me today as I remember my beautiful boy…….Grief 

 

Disbelieving While Grieving

February 4, 2023 /

Matt,  it’s been 8 years and one month since you left this earth and I still find myself in disbelief.   January always hits me the hardest as it’s the beginning of another year but it’s also when you left. 

Somedays I allow myself to pretend you are enjoying the beautiful weather in Florida.  Spending time on the beach relaxing with friends. Then reality will sneak up on me and I feel the weight of grief hit my heart.

The other day I was grocery shopping and saw a can of Beef A Roni.  I had to stop for a moment as the memory of  sending you care packages of food came flooding back leaving me shaken.  

I find myself longing to talk to you.  To hear your voice, to see your smile.  I know so many years have passed but the reality of life is just so unbearable that’s it’s easier to sink into the fantasy that you are alive.  

I have days where I just sit and tell myself that you are really gone.  That what’s left of you sits in an urn on my shelf next to the last picture taken while you were alive.  It’s still seems so surreal and I have such a hard time wrapping my head around this truth that has become my life.  

I’ve read that losing a child is the most devastating experience a parent can live through, I’m finding it’s also the most unbelievable.  I look at pictures of you as a young child and wonder how did this happen.  How did your life end before mine?  Losing a child goes against what we are taught to be the natural order of things.  Children bury their parents not the other way around.  

I know that as long as I live I will carry my grief over losing you but now this disbelief had snuck into the open cracks in my heart.  It appears to have moved in and has no intentions of ever leaving.  Until we meet again I will carry you in my heart………….

 

Life Is A Trigger

June 3, 2022 /

Matt,  As if May wasn’t already tough enough going through another Mother’s Day without you, then getting my CT Scan done and waiting for the results that would either have me dancing for joy or crying from despair, a mass shooting occurred at a grade school killing 19 children and 2 teachers.  

As I watched it unfold I could feel the grief wrapping itself around my heart and soul.  I sat sobbing watching the parents begging police officers to go and save their children.  Their desperate pleas fell on deaf ears as those members of the police force stood around ignoring their cries doing nothing to help those defenseless children from being slaughtered. 

Then it hit.  My own grief exploded as I remembered how I was once that parent.  Screaming at the medical community to do something to save you.  Screaming at both the insurance industry and treatment facilities to act now before it was too late.  

All those buried emotions came flooding into my brain as I felt myself breaking apart knowing that those parents would hear those words that would shatter their souls.  Your child is dead. And I was triggered.  

I sat there feeling helpless.  I wanted to reach out and wrap those sobbing parents in my arms never letting them go.  I wanted to rush to their aid knowing how the world they knew just this morning had shifted off its axis and was now spinning out of control.  

The loss of a child is beyond describing.  It’s life altering.  Losing your child throws you into a different universe. The pain is palpable and unending.  Age does not matter.  How they died doesn’t matter.  It’s the fact that they are gone forever and we are left behind to navigate a world that is so unfamiliar we are completely lost. 

Now these parents will go through the rest of their lives with only memories to sustain them.  Just as I have done.  These parents will never see the faces or hear the voices of their beautiful children just as I have not seen your face or heard your voice for so long. They will cry everyday for all that was lost and for all that could have been.  Just as I have. 

I sadly know what is ahead for these parents. Years of what ifs and why’s.  Years of blaming themselves for something as simple as sending their child to school. Years of wondering what their child would have been like had they lived.  Would they have gone to college, gotten married.  They will miss so many milestones that nothing in life can replace.  There will always be a large hole in the tapestry of their lives that nothing can repair. 

I still blame myself for sending you to Florida thinking if you were home I could have saved you. I still wonder what life would feel like had you lived. I wonder if I would have danced at your wedding and rocked your baby in my arms. 

Life after child loss is filled with indescribable pain.  It’s walking through life feeling as if you’ve lost your mind and really don’t care if you find it again.  It’s watching another parent learning their child is dead and reliving the death of your child over and over again.  

Life is a trigger with no safe place to hide. 💔💔

Madness VS. Mindfulness

September 14, 2021 /

Matt,  it’s been a rough couple of weeks.   August is all about Overdose Awareness.    Everywhere I look on social media there are pictures of beautiful, smiling faces all lost to overdose.   Posted by the moms who are grieving so deeply I can feel their pain as if they were sitting right next to me.   Pain pulsating off the pages right into my heart.  

Many days I would quickly post to my pages and then get off before I lost my mind.   Nothing has gotten better since your death, honestly they have gotten worse.   Young people so full of hopes and dreams are dying every hour of every day.   It’s heartbreaking as I hear about a person who was doing well but is now dead.   I remember the feelings so clearly when I too thought you were good but in reality you were not.  

The grief mothers feel is endless.   Even after 6 years I still have days where reality hits and I just need to go mad and scream until I can scream no more.   The ugliness of our reality is too heartbreaking.   On these days I allow myself to go to my dark, mad world and settle in until the waves wash over me again and again releasing the pain and allowing me to come up for air.

I think having cancer and the constant cloud that follows me compounds my grief.   Prior to my diagnosis I could  physically release this grief.   I would dig in the warm soil with the sun on my back planting until my hands were numb.   Planting kept my mind focused on the beauty I was creating rather than the ugliness of life without you.   I would get on my bike and ride miles and miles feeling the wind in my face brushing my tears away as I emptied my heart.   I would scream into the wind and feel a release like non other.  

Today gardening and biking are things I’m no longer capable of doing.   I never knew how much I needed them until they were gone.   I never realized how I took my health for granted until it was gone.  Back surgery put a stop to both of my grief releases and forced me to try to be mindful.   Mindfulness is the new go to for relieving stress and anxiety.   I can hear you laughing.   I know.   The thought of your physically active mom sitting quietly to meditate is enough to make everyone who knows me laugh.  

Believe me I’ve tried and tried.   Days when my anxiety is out of control I will sit  trying to breathe clearing my mind of all thoughts.   I can tell you it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do.  I imagine myself on my bike pedaling hard, the wind hitting my face.   I think of out running the grief.   

Oh Matt, how I wish we could turn back time.   How I wish I knew nothing about overdose awareness, cancer or grief.   How I wish we could be together again spending time by the sea without any cares.   No addiction.  No cancer.   Just a mother and son enjoying the day.   

So wish me luck with this mindfulness.   I’m thinking the madness is going to win.  

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