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.

6 months

It's been six months since my baby boy was called home. He passed away early one Sunday afternoon and my husband and I slept in the living room that night, not ready to face the room we shared with him. I screamed and cried all night, with gut wrenching pain. Since then I try very hard to keep composure. I have four other kids who need me to stay strong. I have a life that I must keep living, even though everyday since he left all I've wanted to is join him. 

"It'll get better with time." Everyone likes to remind me. But as the eleventh day of the month comes and goes for the sixth time, I wonder when... when will it get better? When I celebrate Mother's Day tomorrow, knowing one of my children will never get to make me hand print cards? Or my birthday, that's approaching, where I won't get to hear his toddler voice wish me a good day? 

Some wounds time can't heal. Some pain you never recover from. You just push on, because you have no choice. 

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. 

The Headstone.

I've been in bed sick the last two days. I think I've caught a sinus infection or the flu. I hate going to the doctor, so I'm trying to postpone it as long as I can. Around 11am, I found the strength to get out of bed long enough to make myself a glass of water and while I stood in my kitchen drinking it, I noticed we had mail. So I stepped out into the cold rainy/snowy weather and got it from our mail box. A small card fell to the ground, with a simple note typed on the front, addressed to my husband. The few sentences read that our son's headstone had been placed at the cemetery and we were free to visit it. 

Although two minutes ago I was too sick to even make myself something for breakfast, I was suddenly running around the house like a mad woman trying to get everyone dressed. No matter how poorly I was feeling, my family was going to see that headstone. 

The pride I feel knowing my son has been buried in a veteran's cemetery is indescribable. He was a soldier who fought his own war. He won many battles and fought with the kind of strength that you only see once in a lifetime. He was the bravest of warriors. 

You can rest now my little soldier. Rest in the arms of our savior. 

Dear Handsome,

My dearest son,

               Life is getting harder each day since you left. People keep telling me I should be okay, now or I will be okay soon, but I think life will never be okay for me again. I don't think I will ever feel "normal." And I'm pretty sure I'll never be the old me again. Losing you has changed me forever. It's changed my perspectives,  my relationships, and goals. It's changed the way I view the world, even the prettiest rainbow is now tainted with shades of grays and black.
           
              Your daddy always told me that the thing he loved the most about me was that I saw the world through the eyes of a child. I saw the magic in Christmas. I thrived on the romance of fairy tales. And I embraced everyday like a new beginning. I was optimistic and naive. But at the same time, your daddy, also said that my child like views of the world aggravated him. He said that it bothered him so, because he knew some day reality would slap me in the face, fairy tales would become fables, magic would become myth and he knew when that day came it would crush my spirit. And he hated to see it go.

                   I would remind him, with a smile on my face, that I was kidnapped at age four, that my father passed away when I was twelve and that I was a married to a military man. If those things couldn't break my spirit, nothing could.

                     Everyone keeps telling me that I should be okay by now. They tell me how I had months to mourn your pending death. I had weeks to cry and to come to terms with the fact that YES, my baby was going to die and I couldn't do anything to stop it. My friends, my family, they all constantly remind me that I KNEW you were going to die and that this shouldn't be such a shock for me.

                 But your daddy, he gets why I'm not okay. He understands that I didn't just lose you. I lost me. He gets that I never once thought I was going to lose you until you were gone, because he knows that I'm the person who sees the glass half full. I'm the twenty four year old woman who still believes in Santa Claus and I just knew that love could cure all things... But my love didn't cure you. My prayers didn't save you. My efforts and knowledge in medicine couldn't keep you alive. I may have heard the doctors say you didn't have long, but I trusted that you would be cured. And now I feel like I wasted time researching and fighting a DNR and fighting with doctors... time that I could have just spent with you, had I understood that the world isn't a fairy tale and we aren't always promised happy endings. Life is never guaranteed.

             Everything I believed it has been shattered. The cataclysm that was your death has ripped my world apart. I don't know who I am anymore and I just miss you so much.

             Heartache, I always thought was just being really sad, but ever since that bald headed skinny man walked me back into a room at the hospital and said "Unfortunately, your son, he didn't make it," I've learned what true heart ache is and it's the worst physical pain imaginable. My heart feels every second of every day like it's being squeezed by imaginary steel bars and my lungs feel small and full, making it hard sometimes to catch my breath.
             
                 You are gone. I now live in a world with no sunshine. I just want my sunshine back.            

my thirty day cleanse

Losing Handsome has been very hard on me. I have lost myself in it. I find myself not caring about the housework and now my house has become a cluttered mess. I don't care about how I look or represent myself anymore. My diet has gone from creative and clean to cheap and fake. I'm sure you can imagine what that has done to my waist line. The things I was once passionate about have lost all purpose. I just don't feel like myself anymore and most of the time I just don't care. I feel like I'm just going through the motions.

But I want to be someone that is happy. I want to grow from my experiences and I want to make Handsome's life worth it. I want to keep his legacy alive. And I want to be the type of parent and wife, I promised I would be. I know I will never be the old me again. What was once normal will never be normal again, but I can't let my depression over losing my son become me. It's not what he would want and I'm stronger then that. 

So today I am starting a 30 day cleanse in hopes that it will help me find a new version of myself and help me find a way to enjoy life again. I am tackling many different things with my cleanse, including my diet, my spirituality, and my marriage. I know I can't fix what's broken in 30 days. I know that thirty days from now, I won't be rainbows and butterflies. I'll still cry daily. I'll still have unanswered questions for God. And I won't be back into my size three jeans, but I am hoping that my thirty day cleanse helps move me in a forward motion so that I'm not stuck just pressing replay every day. 

With my thirty day cleanse, I am going vegan. I was vegan for a few months following Handsome's birth and I felt amazing, but a vegan diet is a great way to cleanse your body of all that nasty fast food. I'm going to begin decluttering my very messy house. I use to be so organized and clean, but I've been too depressed to even care if my house was clean lately to do anything about it. I am, also, going to be working on my spirituality and my relationship with God. Like I mentioned above, I have many unanswered questions and while my faith is not in doubt I am struggling some with my religion, so I plan on reading my bible every night to help me find my way through Christianity. I plan on listening to nothing but positive hits over the next thirty days, as well. Not for my religion, but to help shed the negative feelings and thoughts. And my family, I plan on reintroducing family time and just time with my husband, to help us find a way to be a family again, to be a couple again. 

I don't expect in thirty days to be healed. As I have said before, I don't want to be healed. I want the pain of losing Handsome to stay with me forever, because it is what reminds me that he was here. That he happened and that I loved him, but I don't want to live his death for the rest of our lives. I want us to live OUR lives and remember his, not dwelling on his passing. I don't want us to be the angry, bitter people we are today tomorrow. 

Merry Christmas.

My family has finished unwrapping gifts and the children are busy playing with their new toys, but it does not feel like Christmas. I can't shake the feeling of just wanting the day to be over, because there were gifts under our tree for everyone but Handsome. There are four happy kids playing this morning, but we are a family with five children. One of us is gone and no matter how hard I try to enjoy the season I just can't stop thinking of my forever toddler, alone in a cemetery on this cold Christmas day.

Last weekend, before my family headed off for Disney, we had the opportunity to lay a wreath on Handsome's grave thanks to the organization Wreaths Across America. It was a very beautiful experience.

I miss my baby Handsome more everyday. All I want for Christmas is to touch his face one more time. I hope all my friends, family, and readers not only enjoy their day with each other today, but cherish it. Make memories today that will last a lifetime, because you never know if it's going to be your last Christmas together. We sure didn't know last year that it would be our last with Handsome. 

Dear Handsome,

My Dearest Handsome,

      Today your daddy went back to work and earlier in the week your mamaw went home. Chase and Jaime have gone to school and Jake and Lukas are watching Handy Manny. The mail has come. The house has been cleaned. We've slipped back into our old routines. The world continues to go on, but it's 10:35am and I'm 35 minutes late with your toprimate and banzel. You were suppose to get a feed at 9 and I'm sure you need a diaper change. Everyone seems to have gone back to normal, but me.
 
My normal is you. My normal revolves around your care. How do I go back to normal without you? How do I get through my mornings when my mornings were yours? How do I survive your ten o'clock meds? The knots in my chest, the shortness of breath, the pain in my stomach... how do I get through that every morning at ten o'clock?

It's not fair! I fought for you. I did everything to make sure you were okay. I never missed a medicine dose. I was always on time with your treatments. I did my research. I asked questions. I made sure you were getting the best care. I did everything right. I went above and beyond to save you. Why aren't you here? Why are you gone?

All these other people who don't even take care of their kids, who leave them every weekend with grandparents or babysitters, the ones who smoked while they were pregnant, drank and did drugs, the ones who don't even want their kids... Why couldn't it have been them and not us? It's not fair! I wanted you in my life, even with all the stress and sleep deprivation. I wanted you!

I miss you. I miss the way your hair felt and your face. I miss the sounds you made and hearing you squirm in your crib. I miss you.

Dear Handsome,

My Dearest Handsome,

It's been twenty one days since you were called home to Heaven, but it feels like yesterday to me. I still feel you and at times I swear I can hear you. I get anxious at medicine times, because I want to give you your meds. I can't sleep at night because I feel like I'm forgetting something... I'm forgetting you. People say time heals all wounds, but for me time is standing still.

People ask me daily how I'm doing and I don't know how to answer them. Sometimes I want to hit them for asking or shake them and scream at them, HOW DO YOU THINK I'M DOING! Other times I want to tell them the truth. I want to tell I am feeling unbearable pain all over my body and that every time I get behind the wheel I think, if I run that red light maybe I'll get hit and I can be with you again. Then there's times that people ask how I'm doing and I want to ignore them. I want to pretend they aren't here and that this hasn't just happened to me, to you. But I always just lie to them and tell them I'm doing well that I'm hanging in there, because I know it's what they want to hear. I know my friends and family don't want to hear the truth about how I'm handling your death. I know that if I told them the truth they wouldn't know what to say or how to help, so I just lie.

I've always tried to go out of my way to please other people. I'm a people pleaser and people want me to be okay, so I'm okay, even though I'm not.

And then there's you... For the last two years all I have wanted to do is to make you happy, to give you the best life I could, to save you. Every decision I have made in the last two years has been made with your best interests in mind, even now... Though I can't stand to eat, I do it anyway, because it's what you would want. And I want to lock myself in my room and never come out again, I don't, because it's not what you would want.

And then there's people telling me to move on, to find a me without Nathan, but that's impossible. I will never get over losing you. You weren't my high school boyfriend. You are my son. You are a piece of me that is gone forever. I can never get that piece back. I will never be whole. Finding a me without you... it's just not possible. I'll never heal. A band-aid can't fix this. I'll always hurt for you. I'll always miss you so much that it hurts and I want it that way. The pain is what reminds me that it's real. That you did happen and that you were here and you will always be in my heart. It's a reminder of the love we shared and the bond that we had. It hurts, but it's where you are. It's the hole that only you can fill.

I don't know when I'll be okay. I'm not even sure if I ever will be.