A Story of Addiction & Loss

Category: Mother’s Day grief

Time Does Not Ease The Power Of Grief

Matt,   tomorrow is Mother’s Day.   My 6th without you.   Even as I type these words my heart continues to disbelieve my reality.   I can feel those waves starting to change from swimmable to ones that will pull me under sucking the breath out of my lungs.   That familiar chest heaviness has been following me all day waiting behind every corner ready to pounce.

This year, my grief is multifaceted.   A blend of old and new.   Still having the power to bring me to my knees.   This is my first Mother’s Day without my mom, your grandmother.   Last year I struggled to find the appropriate card.   We weren’t best friends.   We were oil and water.  She was black and white and I am grey.   Mother’s Day changed after your death.

Before you died we went through the motions.  Both uncomfortable but playing the game by presenting a false front to friends and family.   After your death she abandoned me.   She wasn’t there to hold me as I screamed.   She disappeared from my life like that sailboat you see on the horizon floating further and further away until it’s no where to be found.

Most of our fights began when I questioned her behavior.   I just wanted to understand how she could walk away from her grieving daughter.   She died with her secrets untold.   I grieve the relationship we never had.   I grieve the life you should have had.   Her death, so unexpected just like yours.   I was foolish with both of you always thinking there would be another time to talk, to hash things out.   Your deaths hold  shocking similarities.   Sudden and so unexpected.

So now I once again fight to pick up my pieces.   To try to make it through a day to celebrate Mothers.   Realizing I no longer have to stress about finding that perfect card for her has churned up emotions I never thought I would feel.   Knowing there will be no card from you shatters my already scarred heart.

Time does nothing to lessen my grief.   Mother’s Day is bittersweet.   I will always be your mother.   I long to hear you voice.   To see you coming in the door with that smile lighting up my heart.   I long to step back in time and redo everything done when I foolishly thought there would always be more time to say what needed to be said.

I long to have a relationship with my mom.   One that was loving and natural.   I long to hear her say I love you.   I needed so badly for her to explain why she chose to ignore my grief and get on with her life.   I long to return to the past when you were both here and time was something we had plenty of.

Reality is harsh.   Tomorrow will be filled with loss.   I feel like I’m floating on a very small life raft in a very big churning ocean.   I know those waves are coming.   I remember their power to pull me under struggling to find dry land.   Tomorrow I will have no control over when or how they hit.   Memories will find me as tears will fall.   Life as I knew it is gone.   All I can do is hang on and wait for the seas to calm again.

 

 

A Letter To My Son On Mother’s Day

Matt,  This Sunday is Mother’s Day.   My fourth without you.   I actually had to stop and count the years.  I was so shocked and breathless that I needed to count the years on my fingers like a preschooler.   May of 2015, 2016, 2017 and now 2018.   Four years and I’m still having trouble believing you won’t be calling or walking through my door.

Today is only Friday but I feel that familiar grief grabbing onto my chest and starting to tighten its grip on my heart.   I’ve tied hard to not go there.   To forget that this Sunday is that day.   The one that honors all Moms.   Unfortunately,  every other commercial shows kids and flowers.   Smiling mothers giving hugs and kisses to their precious children.

I’ve kept very busy today.   Cleaning out closets. Exchanging winter clothes for summer.   Cleaning like the energizer bunny.   Trying to keep my brain occupied and away from what is coming.   As fate would have it, or maybe it was you, a box of pictures fell from a shelf to my closet floor.   I found your smiling face staring back at me.   I could no longer fight.   Seeing your picture, knowing there would be no more shattered the pieces of my already broken heart.   I slid to the floor and cried out like a wounded animal.   Raw, guttural sounds flying out of my battered soul.

I tried to resist looking further.   But my hands were already searching through the scattered prints searching for more of you.   Pictures from years ago.   You and Mike standing side by side.   Two precious smiling faces.   Brothers 1 year and 20 days apart.   People called you Irish twins.   I called you double trouble.   I never remember seeing one without the other.

Memories of past Mother’s Day flooded my mind.   My two boys running into the house.   Hands full of buttercups and dandelions.   “Happy Mother’s Day”  your little voices shouted together.   When you got older, my gifts became more sophisticated.   Pieces of jewelry or a hand painted picture.

After Mike left for the Coast Guard, you realized how much he was missed.    You never failed to remember my day.   A card, flowers, or a surprise visit.   Distance never mattered.   You’d leave your precious beach and spend the day with me.   You were never too old for a hug or to say “I love you, Mom”.

Now, I’m left with precious memories.   Cards from Mother’s Day long ago.   Oh God, how precious they have become.   Treasured pieces of paper signed by you.   I’ve kept them all these years, never thinking they would become so priceless.   I run my finger along your signature remembering teaching you to write.  Never thinking that one day your unique signature would be something left behind that would bring both joy and unspeakable pain to your mothers heart.    Both my boys so precious.   One now gone forever.

Mother’s Day, once a day I looked so forward to has become a day of loss.   Memories of two boys becoming men.   Always showing up together to surprise their mom.   Both so handsome, sharing childhood antics that bonded them forever.   Stories kept secret from Mom, being shared with howls of laughter.   Mother’s Day now so different from anything I could ever have imagined.

This year I will give myself a gift.   I will allow myself the luxury of tears.   Tears I hide from the world will flow as I remember you as a young man.   Bounding through my door with flowers in your hand.   Your handsome face.   Your smile filling my heart with joy.   I will allow memories to fill my mind.   I will reaffirm that I will always be your mother and you will always be my son.   Our connection continuing through time and space.

I will pray for a sign, a feeling from you.   Your gift to me on this most painful day.   Be the rays of the sun gently kissing my face.   Be the tender breeze whispering in my ear.  Be that puffy cloud or the cardinal in my garden.    Be with me in spirit as I remember your love as both a child and as a man.   My love for you will live on forever.    A bond stronger than death.   A Mothers love transcending time and space.    Her youngest son gone.  Forever holding a piece of her heart.

 

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