Today’s my 47th birthday. The last birthday I had without you here was my 17th. I had you for all the ones in between. It wasn’t enough.
I went and had dinner with Michael, Jill, Ashley and PJ tonight (gonna go out with Dylan this weekend). It was OK, but even though PJ is a great distraction, I had moments when I looked over at the empty chairs at the table and thought…”She should be here…sitting right there”. I also thought of Thomas, that he’d probably be there too. It was a few quick, sad moments (I have 1000s of those a day). I just wish things were like they are “supposed” to be.
I tried to not get sad though, at least not there. But I just missed you on my birthday, babygirl…like I do everyday.
I hate when the media uses the words “new normal” to describe everything. It seems like I hear it multiple times a day. Maybe the world has entered into a new normal. I haven’t noticed. For me, I can’t see anything ever being normal again….
So much has happened in the world since that fateful day and all that bullshit will define 2020 for most people. What will forever define 2020 for me is the loss of my precious, beautiful, irreplaceable daughter. I barely give two shits about Covid, I don’t care about the election. I don’t care about wildfires or about hurricanes. Let it all implode. Welcome to the shit show.
I care about my kids, my husband and my grandson. I care a little about my job too…but that’s it. I find some peace binge watching TV and cooking…but not a whole lot.
But the reality is, I’m ok with not caring about much. It’s like I don’t have the emotional currency to spend anyway. I guess I spend most of it on Courtney. I cry and remember and cry some more…but sometimes I smile.
I’ve neglected this blog for awhile, I just needed a break….from the blog, from the grief FB group and from my constant internet searches where I scour for answers that I can never find.
A few days ago marked six months since Courtney’s been gone. It was a hard day, but I got through it by hanging out with my son.
I miss Courtney every single day, but I don’t know if I’ve accepted her death or I am just able to keep myself sufficiently distracted enough to keep the hysterics at bay. Either way, I’ve been calmer. Not better, but calmer.
I’m still carrying a lot of anger that I’m trying to deal with, but it’s hard. Anger that she was stolen from me, anger towards people who act like nothing happened, anger at people who ghosted me after the funeral, anger at people who think she’s replaceable. I’m just angry.
I guess my point is that my heart is still broken in a million pieces and I swear I can actually feel it, but I am able to function and to laugh a bit. (No one could live with my husband and never laugh.) I just wish Courtney was here to laugh with me.
Yesterday, I sat down, inadvertently leaned forward, rested my elbows on my knees and clasped my hands together. I don’t know what I was thinking about, but I looked down at my hands and started to cry.
I cried for a long time, all the while just staring at my hands and I wasn’t immediately sure why. Then it hit me.
My hands clasped like that looked like my hand holding Courtney’s. And when I stared a bit longer, it looked like my mom’s hand holding Courtney’s.
I wish I could hold both of their hands again, especially Courtney’s 😢
I miss the smell of your skin, your goofy laugh and your joker’s smile. I miss the little ways you made me feel like I was looking in a mirror and seeing a mini-me. I miss your sometimes-crazy sense of style. I miss your tattoos, your wild hairstyles, your piercings and the way you could command attention by just walking in the room. I miss your hugs, your kisses and the way you would crawl in my lap, even at 28 years old, just like you did when you were little. I miss your meddling through my things and asking if you could have something of mine you found that you liked. I miss stroking the back of your hair when I hugged you goodbye. I miss hearing “I love you, mom” and hearing you call me “mommy” or “madre”. I miss you calling me to tell me about your day, to ask me adulting questions or to cry about a boy. I miss you raiding my pantry and fridge. I miss nagging you to take care of yourself or reminding you to do things that I knew you’d forget. I miss hearing you say, “I know mom!” when I exasperated you. I miss a hundred thousand other things.
I just miss YOU.
I wish you didn’t have to leave me so soon! I wish we still had time. I wish I could go back to March, knowing what I know now. I wish I would have called you that day, but I didn’t want to bug you. I wish you would have made it to the guardrail. I wish you would’ve just gone home that night. I wish I would’ve been with you. I wish you were here.
It hurts my heart to know that I will never watch you get married or see you turn 30 or give birth to my grandchild, and what a beautiful child that would have been. It hurts that I won’t get to see you buy a house, pay off a car, settle into a career or get a gray hair. I hurts my heart to know that these thoughts will haunt me for the rest of my life.
I want to say thank you. Thank you for the 28 years I got to spend with you. Thank you for making me become a mom. Thank you for showing me how to be a mom you could be proud of. Thank you for showing me how to be strong, so that maybe I can make it through this life without you. Thank you for teaching me that though parenting isn’t always easy, it’s always worth it. You were always worth it, my beautiful girl.
The gap between those who have lost children and those who have not is profoundly difficult to bridge. No one whose children are well and intact can be expected to understand what parents who have lost children have absorbed, what they bear. Our children now come to us through every blade of grass, every crack in the sidewalk, every bowl of breakfast cereal, every kid on a scooter. We seek contact with their atoms – their hairbrushes, toothbrushes, their clothing.
We reach out for what was integrally woven into the fabric of our lives, now torn and shredded. A black hole has been blown through our souls and, indeed, it often does not allow the light to escape. It is a difficult place. For us to enter there is to be cut deeply and torn anew, each time we go there, by the jagged edges of our loss. Yet we return, again and again, for that is where our children now reside. This will be so for years to come and it will change us, profoundly. At some point, in the distant future, the edges of that hole will have tempered and softened, but the empty space will remain–a life sentence.
Our friends will change through this. There is no avoiding it. We grieve for our children in part, through talking about them, and our feelings for having lost them. Some go there with us; others cannot and, through their denial, add a further measure, however unwitting, to an already heavy burden. Assuming that we may be feeling “better” 6 months later is simply “to not get it”. The excruciating and isolating reality that bereaved parents feel is hermetically sealed from the nature of any other human experience. Thus it is a trap–those whose compassion and insight we most need are those for whom we abhor the experience that would allow them that sensitivity and capacity. And yet, somehow, there are those, each in their own fashion, who have found a way to reach us and stay, to our immeasurable comfort. They have understood, again each in their own way, that our children remain our children through our memory of them. Their memory is sustained through speaking about them and our feelings about their death. Deny this and you deny their life. Deny their life and you have no place in ours.
We recognize that we have moved to an emotional place where it is often very difficult to reach us. Our attempts to be normal are painful, and the day to day carries a silent, screaming anguish that accompanies us, sometimes from moment to moment. Were we to give it its own voice, we fear we would become truly unreachable and so we remain “strong” for a host of reasons even as the strength saps our energy and drains our will. Were we to act out our true feelings, we would be impossible to be with. We resent having to act normal, yet we dare not do otherwise.
People who understand this dynamic are our gold standard. Working our way through this over the years will change us as does every experience– and extreme experience changes one extremely. We know we will have actually managed to survive when, as we have read, it is no longer so painful to be normal. We do not know who we will be at that point nor who will still be with us.
We have read that the gap is so difficult that, often, bereaved parents must attempt to reach out to friends and relatives or risk losing them. This is our attempt. For those untarnished by such events, who wish to know in some way what they, thankfully, do not know, read this. It may provide a window that is helpful for both sides of the gap.
~ By Michael Crelinsten Victoria, British Columbia
I just miss you. There really is no other explanation for the heaviness felt in my heart. It is as simple and yet as complicated as that – I just miss you. What I wouldn’t give for one more moment. One more moment to hold you. To look into your eyes and tell you how much you are loved. What I wouldn’t give to go back in time to the moment where I last held you. Because I would relive all the pain of what came after – for just one more moment with you. I would hold you close to my warm skin, with my arms wrapped tightly around you and I would breathe you in. I would soak in that moment all over again, even knowing it would be our last.
What I wouldn’t give to have a second chance. A chance to do things differently even though I know those things couldn’t change the outcome. But I’d do them anyway because I would do anything to try. There are a thousand different versions of how your story could have played out – and this version is the one I didn’t expect. I cannot undo what has already been done – but what I wouldn’t give to try just one more time.
I never knew missing someone could hurt so badly. I never knew that missing someone would change me so irrevocably. I never knew how deep and wide love could flood into my life. I never knew just how much love could hurt until you left. And I never had a clue that the cause of insuperable pain could be narrowed down into four little words – I just miss you.
Your absence has flooded through every part of me. And like a flood, it has left cracks in my foundation. The flood of your absence has obliterated the core pieces of who I once was. It has cracked my heart wide open and my heart has bled with nothing but undying love. And it left me fighting to survive it all.
For you – I’ll try to keep breathing, I’ll try to keep fighting, I’ll try to keep living. For you – I’ll try to love more deeply and laugh more freely. For you – I’ll try to cherish this one life I’ve been given. No matter the amount of pain and heartbreak. For you – Because you exist in every corner of my soul.
And your name has transcended from the title you were given while you were still here and into a feeling that describes your absence. Because on the days where I just miss you all I can do is utter your name. And when someone asks me what weighs heavy on my heart yours is the name that flows out. Nothing more is needed to describe what it is I am feeling because you are that feeling.
The feeling of missing you, loving you and all the feelings in between. You are the reason they are there and you are the reason I feel them so profoundly.
I never wanted any of this. No one ever wants this. But I wanted you here. And sometimes no matter how much we want – it isn’t enough to stop the waters from rising and the flood from sweeping into our lives.
It’s been months, that feel like years, and still some days there is a heaviness that weighs me down. I keep searching for the words to explain where it comes from or why it’s there. It feels so complicated yet the only words I can muster are – “I just miss you.” I miss you more than words can say and emotion can express.
Everything I do has been washed by the waters of your absence. Even my heart beats to a steady rhythm of you and its echo rings through the space where you used to be. I have never known so much love, so much joy, and so much heartbreak all at once until you. And some days the only explanation for the suffocating pain that still lingers on is… I just miss you.
I think about posting here everyday, not that many people read it, though I don’t care. I haven’t really told anyone about the website, or the Facebook page it’s linked to. But that’s OK, it’s here for me.
I’ve become quiet. It’s almost like I want to keep Courtney and my memories of her all to myself. I do mention her, if she comes up in conversation, but I don’t just go on and on about her. I kind of feel like people don’t want to hear it. They’ve moved on…and I haven’t.
I probably never will.
I am a bit better…for now. I’m not wailing anymore. Unfortunately, those in my grief group tell me it’s only a temporary reprieve. They say I haven’t even had time to accept it yet. I believe them. I’m not looking forward to it all coming flooding back.
I almost feel like she’s just away for now, on a trip or in jail or off in another state. Yes, logically, I know that she isn’t coming back and that she was killed that day, in that car and she was alone. I know she was alone for almost 12 hours before they found her too. I just try not to think about that as much. I will again, just not now.
Now, I will just try to navigate through my life life a zombie, get through my workdays, laugh with (or at) my husband, try to be a mother figure to his daughter, be supportive of my youngest daughter and son…and pour whatever part of my shattered heart that’s left into my baby grandson. And maybe try to cook a meal or two.
I knew that Monday will be four months, but I didn’t know how many days I had been living with this broken heart…so I used a date calculator I had found online.
It broke down the hours, minutes and seconds too. It also said that it had been exactly 1/3 of 2020.
Normal is having tears waiting behind every smile because your child is missing from all the important events in your life.
Normal is feeling like you can’t sit another minute without getting up and screaming, because you just don’t like to sit through anything anymore.
Normal is not sleeping very well because a thousand what if’s & why didn’t I’s go through your head constantly.
Normal is reliving the day your child died, continuously through your eyes and mind, holding your head to make it go away.
Normal is having the TV on the minute you walk into the house to have noise, because the silence is deafening.
Normal is telling the story of your child’s death as if it were an everyday, commonplace activity, and then seeing the horror in someone’s eyes at how awful it sounds. And yet realizing it has become a part of your “normal.”
Normal is each year coming up with the difficult task of how to honor your childs’s memory and their birthdays and survive these days.
Normal is a heart warming and yet sinking feeling at the sight of something special your child loved.
Normal is having some people afraid to mention your child.
Normal is making sure that others remember your child.
Normal is everyone else eventually going on with their lives.
Normal is weeks, months, and years after the initial shock, the grieving gets worse, not better.
Normal is not listening to people compare anything in their life to your loss, unless they too have lost a child. Nothing compares.
Normal is realizing you do cry everyday.
Normal is being impatient with everything and everyone except someone stricken with grief over the loss of their child.
Normal is sitting at the computer crying, sharing how you feel with other grieving parents.
Normal is being too tired to care if you paid the bills, cleaned the house, did the laundry or if there is any food.
Normal is asking God why he took your child’s life instead of yours.
Normal is learning to lie to everyone you meet and telling them you are fine. You lie because it makes others uncomfortable if you cry. You’ve learned it’s easier to lie to them then to tell them the truth that you still feel empty and lost.
And last of all…
Normal is hiding all the things that have become “normal” for you to feel, so that everyone around you will think that you are “normal.”
Dancing in the Sky 