being a grieving mother

Becoming a mother changes a person. I think everyone knows that. I don't believe you have to be a parent to pick up the knowledge that life after kids will never be the same. Our parents remind us all the time how their lives changed after our birth. Tv and books, often portray a transition between not having kids and having kids in their characters. We see our friends become parents and how it alters them. Changing after becoming a mother is expected. We all know that. It doesn't matter if we have kids ourselves or not.

Becoming a grieving mother changes us, too, but unlike the latter there aren't books and tv shows or friends and family to explain that to us. We don't get a handbook as we leave the funeral home on what to expect. There isn't a Monday television show on our local channel that addresses the death of child head on. Most of the time, we don't have friends or family who have experienced what we are embarking. Becoming a parent changes a person, we all know that, but losing a child changes us too.

It's been 9 months, 1 week, 2 days, 3 hours, and 25 minutes since my son's heart stopped beating. I didn't have to check my calendar or my clock to know that, because I count the minutes since I last held my son. At the end of every day, I silently add another tally to the invisible calendar in my head marking the days that have come and gone without my baby boy. But that's all it is... invisible marks, because everyday I wake up expecting to hear his hoarse cries coming from his crib and everyday I have to come to the realization that my toddler died. The pain is just as real today as it was yesterday.

People constantly tell me, time will heal all wounds. They tell me with time, I'll move on and I'll find myself again. But that's not true.

 I don't just have to deal with the pain of loss. I have to deal with the pain of the guilt. Being a parent and knowing I couldn't save my son kills me every second of everyday. I wonder, while I'm cooking breakfast, while I'm bathing my other kids, what could I have done differently to save Nathan.

I deal with an internal conflict. I wasn't just his mother, I was his nurse. I grieve my son in two different ways. I grieve him half the day as his exhausted nurse who knew that he was miserable and in pain and it was time to just let him go. I grieve him as the caregiver who understood his diagnosis and understood that medicine could do no more for him. But as his mother, the other half of the day I am angry and hateful. I scream alone in my head at the thought of the doctors who gave up on him. I scream at myself for not pushing for more answers and I just simply miss him and don't understand why this happened to my perfect little boy.

The post traumatic stress... the questioning of faith... the sigh of relief and the guilt that follows...

My family... Watching my three year old as he tries to understand why his baby brother was put in a box and dumped in the ground or my six year old struggling with guilt because she was too scared of all the medical equipment to get close to Nathan...

When I was pregnant, doctors, nurses, friends, relatives, books, magazines... they all prepared me for becoming a mother, but no one... nothing prepared me for losing that child. Things that use to be funny aren't funny anymore. Things I use to believe in, I don't believe in anymore. I feel like the person I was 9 months, 1 week, 2 days 3 hours, and 45 minutes ago is a stranger and she always will be. I don't know her anymore. She died with her son.

becoming a color runner

Last fall, I started running with my neighbor. I was posting about doing the c25k program. Well, my neighbor and I never finished the program. We stopped at week 6, because Handsome became very ill and doctors told us we were looking at days, weeks at the most before he past away. While doing the c25k program, I was doing it! But I wasn't loving it. I wasn't getting that "runner's high" everyone talks about. I couldn't find my "runner's groove." I was doing it for weight loss, simple as that. 

But when my son past away, I started running again.I would find myself upset, thinking about Handsome passing or the hard life he had and I'd get up and run. And I learned what a runner's high was. I found my groove. I fell in love with running. 

Writing and music have always been my therapy. I'd sing at the top of my lungs to work out frustrations or I'd journal about inner conflicts. But losing Handsome has been so much more then a few frustrations or inner conflicts. It's been excruciating pain, unbearable sadness, anger.... Running has helped me work through some of it. 

This past Saturday, my friends Cindy and Sarah joined me on my first 5k, the color run in Nashville, TN. 

We stopped at each color station to take a picture. This was yellow!

Orange Station.

Pink Station!

BLUE!

About to cross the finish line...

And we are officially color runners, now! 

Some of the most fun I've had in a long time I'm anxious for the next one. 

Happy Easter in Heaven

Another holiday spent at the cemetery. The Easter bunny left Handsome's Easter basket at our house, so we brought it to him. 

Happy Easter in Heaven my sweet baby boy! 

finding myself?

I've let my house go since Handsome passed away. I used to pride myself on having a clean, organized home for my family, but a few months ago, I just quit caring. It was one of the many things in my life that I just let slip, recently. Not that I've let it get dirty, because it's still very much clean. It just... it lacks what it used to be. In my opinion, a person's home is a reflection of themselves. I look at my house like a representation of the type of person I am. I've always wanted my house to send a certain message to my visitors... That I'm not lazy. That I take care of what's mine. And that I'm well organized. But after Handsome passed away, I felt like it was excusable to not have a perfect home. People expected a messy, cluttered home from me, so that's what I delivered. I felt like for the first time in a long time my home was no longer part of the way people perceived me. I was the woman who lost her son. No matter how clean or how dirty my house, that fact would remain the same. 

But as the days keeping passing since Handsome earned his angel wings, I find myself wondering when is it no longer an excuse. When will I get a visitor who thinks that my not- so- tidy bathroom makes me careless housekeeper? What about the people who are visiting who don't know I lost a child, like the sears delivery people who delivered my treadmill yesterday? How long can I just get by with "picking up" every day? When will people start expecting my baseboards to be bleached, my floors freshly mopped with pine- sol, or my beds to be made and laundry put away? 

And then there is the feelings of self worth, or should I say the lack of. I might not feel like decluttering my house, but I feel so... inadequate as a wife and a mother, if I don't. My husband had to return to his job, after losing Handsome. My children had to return to school. Why should I be the one who doesn't fall back into her routine? What makes me special? I sit during the day thinking about the clothes in the dryer that haven't been folded. The dishes in the washer that haven't been put away. The toys scattered in the kids' bedrooms that need to be picked up. It's not that I don't want my house to be the way it used to be, because it bothers me to the point that I lose sleep at night. I just keep telling myself, though, that it's okay, because I lost my child....

I want to be who I used to be. The person I was before I had to watch the life fade from my toddler's eyes. I want to be happy again. I want my house to represent what an organized and clean person I am. I want to come home after going out with the kids and my house "feel" the way it used to. It's not fair that I had to lose my child and it's definitely not fair that I had to lose myself, too. 

Walk 4 Nate

I've been struggling a lot. I lack motivation and energy. Most days, I don't even get dressed, so I apologize for the lack of blogs. I keep telling myself, "tomorrow things will be different." Things aren't different yet and I don't know when they will be. It hurts. It hurts more and more everyday that I have to wake up without my baby boy here. I know everything I feel is normal and that someday I'll be "okay." But for now, I am just doing my best. I hope I can find the words to start blogging again, like I use to. I pray for the motivation to clean and organize my house and share my tips with you all like before. And I hope that sometime soon I can start doing the fun, crafty things, I've always enjoyed doing. Please just bare with me as I try to find myself again and as I try to find joy in a world that lacks a piece of sunshine. 

I've been meaning to share with you the success of Handsome's walk! We hosted the first annual Walk 4 Nate on February 9th, 2013, days after Handsome's second birthday. It was such an amazing feeling to see all these people come out and walk for him, knowing that they cared or that Handsome touched their lives. It was beyond overwhelming, but the best part of it all was being able to donate to The Children's Hospital that took care of Handsome. 

After we walked the trail around the park, we celebrated Handsome's life. We ate blew out candles, ate birthday cake and wrote messages to Handsome on balloons that we released, sending them to Heaven. At the party, we also had an art therapist present. She had art supplies set up at a table for Handsome's party guests to draw pictures for him. It was an absolutely beautiful event. I wish I had the words to explain how much it meant to me. I love each and everyone of you supported us through this. 

Handsome's walk brought in over $2,000 in donations for Vanderbilt's Children's Hospital. Almost doubling the amount we expected to raise. What a perfect birthday present for Handsome! A $2000 donation to the hospital that he called home. 

the new year

2012 was a hard year for me. The hardest. But I'm not happy to see it end. In fact, I haven't posted this blog sooner, because I've been trying to ignore the "new year" as much as possible. My son died in 2012. I spent the year watching my son become more sick, receive a prognosis I wasn't ready to hear, and I lost parts of my identity. One might think I'd be happy to be starting over, to have a fresh start, but I'm far from that. 

Every time I hear "2013" pain strikes my heart and my stomach twists in knots. It's painful being in a year that my baby doesn't exist in. In 2012, I had Handsome. It may have been hard, but I could hold him. I got to see him smile. I could hear his voice, touch him, feed him, smell him... in 2012, he was here. But he's just a memory in 2013. 

I feel like I'm leaving him behind, like I'm moving on without him. 

By now, each year, I've come up with many resolutions, with excitement. I'm going to get organized. I'm going to pursue my photography career. I'm going to lose weight. I'm going to go vegan.... I make A LOT of resolutions, but with the lack of anticipation for the new year, I've also lacked motivation to make changes. 

I think about who he was last year at this time, what he looked like, how he laughed and he used to say "hey" in his hoarse little voice. I remember how good it was for us, last year. Doctor's were confident that we had conquered his epilepsy and the seizures were under control. Everyone had so much hope for my Handsome last January. They told us it was all an up hill climb from here. He'd have bad days, but he was getting better....

It's been 12 months, though, and instead of getting better, he's no longer here. 2012 was the last time I got to hold my baby. 2012 was the last time I had hope.

I miss 2012.