This grief journey...

I wish I could tell you I am all better but that would be a lie.  I am better in many ways but I am still working it all out....All I know is to write and paint till my feelings line up with the truth that I know.  I read somewhere that losing a child is like losing a limb in some weird peculiar way.  It will never grow back, you must learn to go on without it, to live and function with something missing everyday.  You must adapt to the loss, make changes in how you live and you will never be the same, it will always be missing.  It is a good analogy.  Everyday I feel as though something is missing.  Everyday I have to go on, even though something is painfully, terribly absent.

It is a very interesting thing, grief.  No one can explain it to you. I have watched people go through it but I never understood it, totally.  The short circuiting of the brain, the fog that settles in, the grace that gets you through it, the lingering pain that you so desperately want to end but don't want to let go of because it is all you have left.

Justin didn't live with us anymore, he lived in Vegas.  I didn't see him often or regularly in the last three or four years as he went on his own journey to build a business and get his young adult life together.  Holidays and weekend visits.....drive by's as he liked to call them.  I live in a house filled with memories of him, a closet door that marks all his growth and a couch he would sometimes show up on unexpectedly.

What you so desperately miss in this grief journey is what could have been, what you saw for the future.  Vacations together, a wedding, grandchildren, holidays spent being entertained by the funny one in the family, having all three of the boys together, his teasing and calling me Mommy, seeing him grow into the man I knew he could be, that is what I miss.  This is what I wake up in the middle of the night crying about.

And so I write, I paint and I cry out to God.

These thoughts swirling trapped in my head

I have no choice but to write them

To set them free

From pen to paper they come to life

Rising from the ashes

Then hope takes flight

I am closer to Him and therefor closer to him, my Justin.  I share because someone needs to know, needs hope and though it may seem that I am without it, I am not.  I know hope...we walk hand in hand.  This would be an impossible journey without hope.  The pain is dulling, the fog is clearing and I am pressing on with hope, living in grace and processing through the pain.  One day at a time.  One breath at a time.  One hopeful smile at a time.  

Thank you to all my friends and family that are loving me through this.  I am deeply thankful for your presence in my life.