A Story of Addiction & Loss

Tag: child loss

Broken And Blessed

Matt,   The summer has ended and Fall has begun.   Everyday the geese fly over the house honking as if to say we are here, we are home.   I stop and listen thinking of you.   How we both would stop whatever we were doing and just be still listening to their beautiful song.

Fall also reminds me of my brokenness.   My gardens need tending so badly.   Before my cancer I would be weeding and planting colorful Mums.   Digging in the dirt was always a form of therapy for me.  I look at the gardens and feel such a loss.   I can’t do the physical work to transform the summer gardens into an array of colorful fall beauty.

There are so many things I can no longer physically do.   Cleaning out closets.   Putting away summer clothing and going through my comfortable fall sweaters.  The little things I took so for granted before the back surgery.   Sadly, I now understand the difficulties you lived after your back surgery.   

I’ve learned the saying is true.  Until you walk in someone else’s shoes you can never comprehend their pain.   I remember watching you walk.  It broke my heart to see your young body ravaged by pain.   I remember thinking I would take your pain if only I could.   I wonder if you know that I now know your pain.   Do you see my body no longer capable of doing those physical things that used to bring me such joy.  Do you know I have become you.   

Do you hear me when I ask for forgiveness.   Do you know I would give anything to have a moment with you.   To hold you and tell you I understand.   I now know how it feels to be broken not just emotionally but physically.   Your death broke my heart.   My cancer broke my body and on many days it breaks my spirit.    

Through all this brokenness I also feel blessed.   After chemo, two surgeries and radiation my body remains free of cancer.   My last scan was clear of disease.   I can tell you that waiting to hear the results is maddening.   My mind goes to all the what if’s exactly as it does when I think about your death.   The unknown can become a silent torture.  

On my dark days, I remember all the things I can do.   The little blessings of walking the dogs.   Of being able to stand and make dinner.   Of being able to enjoy the beauty as I kayak through ponds and rivers.   The blessings of friends who continue to pray for me.   The blessing of my Faith.

My brokenness mixed with blessings reminds me of the Japanese art of Kintsugi.   The art of repairing broken pottery pieces using gold.   The gold creates a stronger, more beautiful piece of art.  The gold highlights the scars in the pottery transforming the piece into something new and stronger than before.   

Your death and the loss of my health has left me with many scars.   I think of my blessings as the gold that is slowly filling my cracks allowing me to change the way I think of myself as no longer completely broken but learning to embrace my strengths reframing my pain into something of collateral beauty.   

A Letter To Matt On What Should Have Been His 42nd Birthday

Matt,  Today would have been your 42nd birthday. I should be on my way to the beach to spend time with you on your special day. You and I would spent time together on the beach, taking the dogs and watching their joy as they ran through the surf while we caught up on the happenings in our lives.  We would be planning our dinner feast of crabs, shrimp and beer.   We would be heading to JD Shuckers your favorite restaurant.  Our family would be together at our happy place to celebrate you.

But today our reality is much different from my dreams for your birthday.  For you are forever 37 and this is your fifth birthday in heaven.  💔

Today I will spend the morning letting my grief pour out from my soul.  Looking through every album I own with pictures of our life.  Beautiful memories of a life with two boys who were always together.  Boys staring back at the camera with innocent, beautiful faces. You with your green eyes and Mike with his blue eyes.

Pictures of you with that smile and those beautiful eyes staring back at me through all the phases of your life.  Pictures that prove you lived. Beautiful memories of your life from infancy through adulthood.  Looking so happy and healthy.  It is so hard for me to understand this reality.  My brain knows you are gone.  My heart struggles with the truth.

Today there will be no family party.  No cake, no funny card.  I will never see you with your brother standing side by side laughing about how your both over the big 4 0.

Brothers laughter blending together as you tell stories of childhood antics that mom should never know. Sharing your accomplishments in life as your children listen at your feet.

Your brother, Mike  will never know the joy of being an uncle.   He will never know the joy of holding his brothers children in his arms or teaching them to run through the surf with you by his side.   He will never watch his younger brother discover the joys and heartbreaks of being a father.

Mike will never have the opportunity to take your son fishing or show your daughter treasures saved from your childhood.  He will never be able to offer advice or share his list of do’s and don’ts of fatherhood.   There will be no more children squealing with joy as that new puppy comes running into their arms.   No more brothers sharing the secret of what makes a house a home.

No more pictures of my boys with arms wrapped over each other’s shoulders.  No more memories of happy times as we celebrate you growing older.  No more handsome faces staring back at the camera telling me to stop with the pictures already.  No more blended laughter for your mother to hear.

Losing you is losing a future of love, laughter and beautiful memories.  Losing you has left an undeniable void in our lives.  Losing you is never seeing my boys together again.  Never hearing your laughter as you tell your children stories about your childhood sharing secrets that only your brother would know. Losing you is never dancing at your wedding.  Losing you is never sharing the joy of holding your newborn child for the first time. Losing you has split my life into the before and after.

Pictures of me before your death are almost unrecognizable to me.  A real smile. Similar green eyes staring back at the camera.  Happiness shining through every photo.  Today my pictures reflect an emptiness in my eyes.  A forced smile. A face broken by grief.  Pictures of before and after tell the story of how grief changed me from the inside out.  Pictures showing a shadow of who I used to be.

Reality is that I will never see you coming through my door with your children in tow.  That smile and those eyes forever gone.  No mini Matt’s for me to spoil and hug.  No future generation to share stories of your childhood antics.  No more of you.  😢

How I wish Heaven had visiting hours just for these special days. I would throw myself into your arms and never let you go.  I would tell you how much your loss has changed my life. I would tell you over and over again how much I love you. I would beg you to stay with me forever.

Today I will honor your life.  I will let my grief have its way.  Today I will let my tears flow no longer fighting or pretending that I am ok.  Today I will remember the joy you brought to my life.  I will allow myself the gift to grieve. To feel the profound loss of your death.

Today I will close my eyes and remember your hugs, your voice, your smile.  I will remember two boys chasing each other through the surf  throwing wet sand as your laughter was carried by  the ocean breeze.  Today I will accept the reality of knowing that I will grieve for what should have been for the rest of my life.

Happy Birthday my beautiful boy.   May you celebrate by dancing on the stars and swinging from the moon.   May you fly free knowing you are forever in my heart.

The Future That Was Never Meant To Be

Matt,   I’m having such a hard time believing that we are coming up on 50 months.   The 3rd of March marks another month added to the long list of the months that have passed since your death.   I find myself feeling guilty and anxious that I’ve not been able to follow that so called grief path.   Society continues to believe that grief comes with an expiration date.   I find this disturbing as it makes me feel like there really is something wrong with me.

I’m tired of trying to talk myself into feeling “better”.   Like I should be able to adjust to life without my youngest son like someone adjusts to a change in the weather.  As if enough time will ever pass to make me less vulnerable to those grief waves.

Those who have never experienced child loss have no idea how life altering and complicated our grief truly is.   I’ve seen the look on peoples faces when I tell your story and begin to choke up.   I’ve heard,  ‘Oh, I thought it just happened recently, not four years ago”.    As if a mother should put on the stiff upper lip as she speaks about her dead child.

I tell those who have never buried a child that this experience resembles childbirth.   One can tell you how it feels and what might be expected, but until you experience it on a personal level you will never come close to imagining how those contractions can take you to a place of excruciating pain almost unimaginable to the human mind.   The pain of child loss does the same.

As child birth comes with hopes and dreams for the future, child loss comes with the demolition of those dreams.   That’s the worst part of a parents grief.   Not only have we lost our child, we’ve also lost their future.   In losing that future we have lost a large part of ourselves.

That’s the biggest misconception society will never understand.   When a parent buries their child they bury so much more.    Child loss goes against what society deems as normal.   Children are supposed to bury their parents not the other way around.   That is the so called “norm” we are taught to believe from childhood.   I stressed about how you would survive after I died.   Never once did I think I would be the one struggling to survive after your death.

You will be forever 37.   Your future cut brutally short.   The dreams of what I desperately wanted for you died with you and left me struggling to accept that your future was never meant to be.   Those dreams of watching you take a bride.   Of receiving a call that your son or daughter had arrived.   Watching you experience fatherhood.   Or watching you grow old, get gray and still want to walk on the beach with your mom.

Child loss is like non other.   Parents like me remain unnamed.  We are not widows, nor are we orphans.   The English language has yet to identify a word to describe us.   Losing a child is absolutely undescribable.

The length of time after child loss makes no difference.   It’s new each day as parents wake and reality hits.   Our brains and bodies have the grueling task of moving into the future as we leave a part of our hearts behind.

 

This Roller Coaster Ride Called Life

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Matt,   The reality of your loss sucks.   There really is no pretty way to put it.   You are dead.   The order of my life has been altered beyond repair.   Everything has changed.   I have a deep pain that can never be fixed.   There is nothing that can be done to make this right.   Your death was out of order throwing my life into a place that makes no sense.

I feel like I’m back on that roller coaster.   The one we rode together during your active addiction.   One day things were great then the very next moment that unexpected sharp turn came out of nowhere throwing us off course and breathless.   I’m a mess.  Turned inside out.   Struggling to get through the next sharp turn.

This month has been brutal.   First, flying to Florida to defend your life.   I felt like my already broken heart had been drug over shards of glass.   Left torn and bleeding in my chest.   Being in the place you lived.   Walking the beach you walked knowing you were gone hit me with an ugly dose of reality.   You really died.   You are gone.   In that moment you took your last breath I was counting down the days left before I would see you again.   All the plans I made, the things we would do.   Lunch together.  Walking on your beach.   Me getting a glimpse into your new life.   Gone with your last breath.   Like a puff of smoke on a windy day.  Here for a moment, then gone forever.  That roller coaster once on the upswing, now forever twisting and turning leaving me unprepared for this gut punching grief.

My next event where I felt strapped to that horrible coaster was Beau’s wedding.   Your best friend.   The man who sat and sobbed in my kitchen after hearing the news of your death.   His tears broke my heart.   We shared our grief over your incredible loss.   I remember hearing his voice.   I’m getting married.   I want you to be there.   Oh God,  that punch hitting again.   How can I feel joy for this man who deserves so much happiness when I will never hear those words from you.

I remember feeling that familiar throat tightening pulling up to the church.   The ride was beginning and I was holding on for dear life.   My mind kept telling me that life does go on.   This was life and I must participate.   I felt the jolt as the coaster started upon entering the church.   The first twist was seeing Beau. So handsome as he approached holding out his arms to welcome me.   A second jolt as I felt his arms wrap around me.   For a brief second my fantasy won and it was you.   The hug my heart craves.   I closed my eyes hoping to stop the flow of tears.   Reality broke through as the car sped up hurling my heart to the ground.   You are gone.

I remained strapped in the mixed emotions of joy and grief.   The ride to the reception was filled with small talk.   What a nice wedding.   How handsome Beau was.   How he and his beautiful bride only deserved the best in life.   You were the elephant in the car.   Knowing if I spoke your name my coaster would hurl off the tracks and implode into space.   Seeing Beau standing with Mike hurled me into another unexpected curve.   That twist took my breath away and left me holding onto my sanity.   The missing musketeer.   You are gone.

My wedding anniversary.   Nine years on the 25th of October.   Married to an incredible man.  A man who stood by me as your addiction wove its way through our marriage pulling us through the hell you lived.   This man who never once gave up on either of us.   Your crazy mother who was slowly losing her mind fighting to save her addicted son.  Or you the man with the horrible disease.   He rode that roller coaster hanging on for dear life as our world was thrust into the unknown of where the ride would finally end.

This man and our day should have been number one on my mind.   Instead all I could think of was you.   How handsome you looked.   Your incredible smile as you took my hand and walked me down the aisle of our tiny church in the woods.    I remember your laugh watching the kids on the dance floor.   Our picture frozen in time.   You walking me into a new life.   I stare at us.   Both glowing with joy and happiness.

You are gone.  We will never walk into a church together again.   I will never feel the joy of watching you begin a new life.   I will never see you standing next to Mike or Beau as you take a bride.   The roller coaster of emotions has become my life.   One day I think I will make it.   The ride is climbing to a new height.   Feeling hopeful that one day this overwhelming pain will start to release its grip on my heart.   Just as suddenly an event, memory or smell sends the coaster crashing toward the ground leaving me holding on wondering if I will survive this unpredictable ride.

I’ve always hated roller coasters.  But you knew that.   You tricked me into getting on one and cracked up telling me how all you could hear from the ground was me screaming.   Matt,  I’m still screaming.   Silent screams as a new day begins without you.  I scream everyday as I try to navigate this life.   I scream not knowing where the twists and turns will leave me from one day to the next.   I scream your name in my mind as I’m whipped around so many unexpected curves continuously slapped with my reality.   You are gone…….

 

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