lets cancel the next 4 weeks this year.

It's almost your birthday. 

It's almost been a year since you died. 

I miss you both. So much, so interwoven, so that I can't even sort out who I am talking to sometimes. Maybe it doesn't matter, but I hope you're not offended if it does. You're everywhere, and nowhere, and I don't know how to deal with it. 

Last Sunday, I went to Wal-Mart late at night, alone, and there was this guy who walked like you. It was so devastatingly familiar that your name pounded across my heart, rose up in my throat, to my lips, where it died just like you did when he turned and his face was all edges at the wrong places and mean expressions and not you at all. 

Last Monday, I helped a patient onto a toilet, and she gripped my hand and her eyes were the exact same color and shape as yours were, and I flashed back in my memory to a night where I was 12 and selfish and refusing to believe that you were really that sick and really that helpless as I rushed through drying off after a shower as Dad banged on the door because you needed to get in RIGHT NOW and you couldn't get to the downstairs one, so I huffed under my breath as I walked across the living room and Mom told me how it was and I hated her for making me know that you really were THAT sick and weak and I wish I could go back and be kinder and better but I can't, so I checked on that patient every half hour instead of every two to make sure she didn't need help that wasn't there because I hope somehow you see and know that I am sorry. 

I used to think it got better, you know? 

But the truth of it is, it just hurts for so long that your heart goes into shock again, and numbs you until something stabs the wounds, making them urgent and violent and reminding you of all of the pain you've been ignoring for forever. 

It's hard to live when your soul feels like warm Swiss Cheese, flimsy and sticky and full of holes where you should be. It's hard to breathe without you here with me. I have been trying to just not stop. Constant motion, constant studying and school and work and kids and please don't let me think about it please don't let me think about it please don't let me think about how you're both gone and left me behind and is it crazy to be jealous of two dead people or is it crazy to hope that I am dreaming, all of this is just a dream and I'll wake up in a white room with slanted ceilings and clowns stenciled around the top and you'll be there and somehow I will make sure you both are okay if I just stay in this dream long enough to find a cure for you and another cure for you and it will all be fine. 

This morning, my son told me there was a little girl in the room with him, and I smelled you and I cried the whole way to work, where I found a decomposing Pokemon card in front of my car and thought about sitting at a picnic table in front of our house while you changed the rules and took both of our cards, but I didn't really know how to play and only wanted to because you thought it was cool and I wanted you to think I was cool. So I picked it up and kept it with me, like somehow you left it from a memory that only I have now. 

I feel as though I am the only one in the world who feels like this; I am on the edge of a cliff with fog all around me, and your absence has sank into my body and manifested in sores in my mouth and the cracks under my nose and the vessels bursting red in my eyes, and I could scream into an abyss until my throat, raw with grief, bleeds out and I fall off. 

Where are you? 

I wish you would come back to me. 

Oxygen Tank for Christmas

It must be getting old to read this, if you can read this.
I only write here when I am desperately sad anymore.
But Christmas is in a few days and I know it's cliche to say, but I really can't believe how fast it has gone....and how long it has been. See, I'm still stuck back in February, walking out into the bright parking lot, wondering how the world was moving.
Still sitting in a room, gasping for oxygen, telling Mom I can't breathe, I can't breathe, I can't breathe. I haven't been able to really breathe since then.
The loss of you has sunk down in my lungs, seeped into my alveoli, breaking the walls apart... like emphysema, I can't get a good air exchange now, and my blood seeps through and returns to my heart dirty and filled with days where you were here to make me smile.
Last Christmas, you didn't come over. I called you when I got home, we talked for hours. I thought that I had finally somehow saved you when you called me the next night to tell me you were checking back into detox. You weren't excited, but I was. When I hung up, I cried and called Mom to tell her. It's unfathomable to me to think that I won't even get to call you this year, and I can't stop thinking about all the times I had and didn't take advantage of.
It hurts but the more time that passes, the more I can find the rage that I knew would be coming.
Much to my surprise, I am not angry at you. I really thought I would be, if I can be honest here, just between us. I thought I would be so angry that I would hate you.
That happened with Mia for awhile, you know.
But I'm not mad at you, not with any kind of burning rage, not really.
I am so angry with myself. With our society's system, with how we treat people with addiction, with our healthcare, with our world.
I went out a few weeks ago, and I didn't really feel like drinking that night, but everyone else was having a beer, and I felt weird to say no, so I said okay, and as I was driving home, it sunk into my stomach that it must be so impossible for people who struggle like you did. It must be so hard, all the time. I cried on the way home and felt stupid for thinking I had any kind of grasp on anything. I thought about how fucked up it was that I could go home and be fine, but you would have taken weeks to recover from a slip up like that. I thought about how it was hard for me to say no, and how it wasn't a big deal for me.
You used to be so embarrassed to admit to having any kind of issues.
If it wasn't a big deal to say no, if it wasn't a big deal to say that you needed help, I wonder if you would have been able to fight back more.
If I could have convinced you that nobody would think poorly of you for it, if I would have understood better earlier.... if only, if only, if only.
I want to scream at strangers saying reprehensible things about people in the same place you were.
I wish I could ask you what you would want someone to say.
What would have helped you.
And then I would do that instead of crying and trying to get the air around the knife in my throat and through my broken lungs.

Merry Christmas, Justin.
I miss you every day.

Green Bean Casserole

Thanksgiving kind of sucks to me.
It's been a day surrounded by anxiety and depression for over 12 years. I don't know why.
You didn't die near Thanksgiving.
You weren't born near Thanksgiving.
She didn't die near Thanksgiving.
She wasn't born near Thanksgiving.

It doesn't make sense.
This year, it makes me almost angry.
Except I'm not mad.
I just keep thinking about how Green Bean Casserole was your favorite part of the holidays and I wonder if it will taste like dirt this year without you.
Last year you said you were bringing it, but I was afraid you would forget and then you wouldn't have your favorite dish, so I made it and brought it too, and then we had two.
If I had known what a drastic change last year to this year would be, I would have relaxed and enjoyed the day more. I would have caught it in a bottle and saved it so that I could open it this year and you would be here with us, laughing at something I said about my kids or mom, , making it seem funny instead of bad, and the food would not even matter, except I would make sure you had that casserole still, because you missed it the year before, or was it the one before that?
I keep thinking about how things could have been, and I wish that I wouldn't do that, because it makes my heart and my head hurt, and I feel kind of sick, and I can't figure out why you're gone and now we won't laugh about the things our kids say to each other about us.
I feel like I've been crying my whole life about missing you.
Missing her.
And so...I keep telling myself I'm not mad, and I don't think I am.
I'm jealous, though, and that's uglier.
Jealous of my friends who laugh with their brothers and sisters about how it was when they were small.
Jealous of them not being sad, or not being heartbroken, or not being lost in grief.
Jealous if they're upset about their brother being a dick at Thanksgiving and not having to do whatever, or mad about plans changing, or inconvenienced, or anything else that they're allowed to feel because I get it, I do, but there's not really a way to describe that I wish you were here for me to be mad at for being a dick and making Thanksgiving tense.
It's really lonely on this side of things this year.
I keep wondering if it will get better soon.
Maybe the casserole will taste the same.
But I will always think of you.

Mothering Through Grief

Becoming a mother was, hands down, the scariest and most wonderful thing to ever happen to me. I was young, dumb, and unprepared to see the second line come across that test 5 years ago, but looking back, I often think of it as the day that saved my life.
I think of it as that even more, seeing where so many of the people that I filled my life with have ended up.
I think of you as the person who saved me. And I loved you so much, I wanted to do it again and again... and so your brothers came to be, and I have never been happier about something in my life.
The journey of motherhood has, for me, been both the most natural and the absolute hardest experience, filled with the most joy I have ever known, while simultaneously plunging me into the depths of despair as I have struggled through postpartum depression and anxiety.
I have prided myself on rising up and learning everything that I can about special needs programs, about getting through the often complicated process of wraparound therapies, speech, medicaid, and everything else that comes along with making sure you, my kids, have the best chance at excelling and having an easier time when I can't be there watching over you. And I am proud of the faith I have in you, I'm glad I am so confident that you (all of you) really are going to be more than okay as you all grow up.
Things were starting to feel good, you see, it felt like a rhythm was taking place in our life. I thought that things were the way everyone must experience them.

But then.... something terrible happened in my life, and all of the normalcy in the chaos of motherhood.... it turned into just chaos, and I have been holding on for dear life and hoping you kids forgive me someday.
When your uncle died, a part of me died with him. And it has made me unsure of myself, it has put me into a fog of depression and sadness that I only wish that I could say I'd never known. And as much as I have tried to keep everything normal for you, I know that this year has been hard for you because of me.
Grief has made me unpredictable.
Even as I sit here, writing this, you are coming to me, sitting beside me, and you are watching my face. You are wondering if I am about to laugh with you, at you, chase you, play.... or am I going to be quiet, seeing you but not really seeing you, distracted, sad, maybe angrier than the situation calls for when you cause some mayhem.
I hope that you know that I am trying so hard to be normal, and that this is the best I can do right now. I hope you know that if I could be better, I promise I would be.
I spend a lot of time thanking my God for you. I close my eyes and shoot up a prayer, thankful for your distraction, for the bursts of pure joy that come out of you and radiate straight into my heart, the laughter that fills my ears and my soul, the moments of cleverness that astound me and make me smile genuinely, make me forget that I am torn apart, make me feel whole and wonderful and alive. I wonder where I would be if I didn't have you in my life, filling my days with your antics, distracting me from thinking about what I always think about, just not head on.

And then.... I spend a lot of time raging at this same God, cursing him out, screaming with every fiber of my being, every cell in my body, for letting this happen. For letting me have you, for letting me fuck you up, for letting this happen when you need me and letting me be so disgustingly useless. I read these studies about the effects on children whose mothers suffer from depression, particularly at the critical developmental period that you all are in RIGHT NOW, and it makes me weak. It makes me weep. When I am feeling particularly low and alone, it sometimes makes me wonder if you would be better off without me at all. It sits in the back of my mind, dimly lit, buzzing, annoying, just close enough for me to know it's there. It's scary, and I am glad that it makes me afraid, because it shakes my grief and moves it out of the way so that I can think about watching you grow up.
I think about loving you for your whole life, and I find this strength to keep going, to push myself past what I think I can do, and then I do more.
I want your life to be magical.
I want you to be happy.
And so out of this grief, I find love. I find him in pieces of you, I find moments of my life before you shining through in you, and I will myself to shake this fog away, to be here now.

I pray that you remember the good days more than the bad, and so even when I cannot do it, I do.

This is hard. And for me, it always will be hard to look back at this incredibly complicated period of life, where I will always wish I could go back to, to relive you in your innocent toddler stages, and where I will always run away from the heartache that is losing the first and best friend in my life.

I hope, above it all, that you know, that before everything else, you feel the love I have for you before you remember the rest.

Love,
Mom

The first one.

It's my birthday tomorrow. The first one in my entire life without you.
Tomorrow you won't call me, or text me, or ignore me, or write on my facebook wall.
I've been dreading it for awhile now.
Been avoiding it for awhile now, to be honest, but it's here and so now I can't avoid your absence anymore.

You are a tsunami. I have been running away from you for my life, because I know when the towering wave breaks over me, my bones will break, my heart will shatter. The undertow will pin me to the rocks and I won't be able to hold my breath against the thought of you forever, so I will gasp the salty water in, and in will flood you, and all that comes along with it. The guilt, the despair, the never-ending loneliness that I can't seem to shake off, no matter who is with me, will drown me.
I had forgotten exactly how this felt, but I don't know how I managed to do that.
I remember sitting in  a car when I was 16, with a boy I liked, and we were bullshitting around, talking about the number of kids we each wanted to have.
He said two, like him and his sister. The perfect amount.
But I said that you had to have at least three, because if one of them died, and there was only two, then the other one would be all alone.
I wonder if Fate was listening in, and she took that as some sort of challenge.
I apologize, because that's not what I intended.

I have this voicemail saved from you. My phone is shattered, and slow, and the battery dies and the picture quality has lowered significantly.
But you called me after I had fallen asleep already last year. And you said, "I was gonna call you earlier, but I didn't..... and I didn't do the Facebook thing or text ya either, but Happy Birthday, Jaim. I love you."

Maybe this is so hard because I will never get back to the age I was the last time that I saw you. This is proof that time is really passing. Proof that I am growing older and you are dead.
I thought about visiting the cemetery after work today. Maybe I will tomorrow, I don't know. I haven't been there since we buried you in the snow. I think about it, but it never brought me closer to Mia.
I remember you telling me that you went sometimes, like on Halloween when someone watched you the whole time, thinking you were a vandal and not a heartbroken big brother. But I never felt her there, really. And I am afraid to go and not feel you around either.

I wish you were here to tell me that it's gonna be okay.

Shift.

I shoot straight up, in the middle of the night. It's dark and quiet and peaceful, but the hair at the base of my skull is damp and I feel a cold bead of sweat trickling down between my shoulder blades. I can't catch my breath.
To my left, my baby is breathing softly. I press my hand, gentle and firm, on his stomach, to hear him grunt and be sure he's actually breathing and it's not my imagination shielding me. He grunts and snuggles his head into the mattress more.
To my right, my 4 year old shifts slightly, having snuck out of his own bed and across the hallway while I slept and crawled into bed beside me, and I hold my hand beneath his nose to feel his hot breath.
It's not enough, so I quietly slide to the bottom of the bed and sneak across the hallway myself, poking my head in the door and listening to my middle son snore and kick the wall beside him in his sleep, as he does when he's having a particularly thrilling dream.
I hear my dog drag himself from his spot in front of the front door, anticipating my footsteps padding the stairs to check on him next, the only one in the whole house aware of my nightly ritual since the end of February.
I glance over towards my fiance, snoring lightly on the couch, the light from the TV he fell asleep watching playing across his face, and ease down on the bottom step as my dog comes to kiss my face and then go back to his spot by the door, guarding us...... or soaking up the cool air from the crack underneath it.
I stand and go back upstairs, but I know I won't sleep yet, so I wander into the bathroom, sit on the edge of the bathtub, and drop my head into my hands. I am so tired.
I can feel my hands tingling with.... adrenaline? Fear? Rage? Probably just exhaustion. I press my lips together and breathe quietly through my nose because I don't want to accidentally wake the kids up and have to comfort them tonight. My mind wanders to undone laundry, the dishes I was too tired to do that I left in the sink, the groceries about to expire in my fridge, the toys on the floor I'll need to clear before allowing the baby free range... the ones my fiance will likely clean up in frustration with my lack of helpfulness in the morning. It wanders to clients at work, schoolwork, logistics of the day, of the trip to see my best friend in a few weeks, to workouts I need to do, to walking my dog. It wanders anywhere except to you, until it finally does, and I shake like a leaf in the wind at the enormity of your absence.
How do I go on?
I keep trying. I hold it together most of the time now. I laugh at  my kids most of the time now. I don't forget things as much now. I spend the majority of my time avoiding the fact that I am never going to see you again. And I do okay, you know, at that.
And I try to remember that the world isn't focused around my grief, that people die all the time, that my grief is not more than anyone else's, that everything isn't about the fact that you died one night and I am still alive without you.
But then, our brother has a senior night, and you were at the last one in the fall but you aren't now this spring. And they announced his parents and siblings and last time they said your name and now they don't. And I remember that  this is his big night, not mine, not yours and so I push back the tears pricking the back of my eyes, I swallow them down, and in an instant I am transported to a different time, a different place, a different lifetime, where I am explaining to this counselor Mom took me to in the eight grade about Mia and about how I can't sleep because she died and I don't know how to be, and I feel those tears coming up and she notices me swallowing those traitors down my throat, so that I can keep it inside me, a reminder that she was here, that you were here, the pain I swallow proof that something good existed that doesn't exist anymore.
When I try to explain that I'm not doing so good, it doesn't come out right and I feel a little selfish, and so I have been trying to not say much, you know?
I would normally call you because you always knew what to say, or not to say, when I got like this. I'm trying to be like that for our brothers and sister, but I don't think I'm getting it the way you would have.
I keep hoping I'll wake up and I won't feel so.... this way.
How have 3 months passed so quickly, though? At the same time, it feels so long ago already.
As though who I was when you were alive is an entirely different person than who I have become in your death. Like strangers, or old friends who might awkwardly chat over the produce cart if we ran into each other after we had a weird falling out.
I just keep wondering.
Who am I without you?
I don't know, and so I whisper back to my room, slide between the two sleeping children, and close my eyes, pray for darkness to drift from the room to my mind, and will myself to sleep.

Easter Week and Missing You.

I thought Easter would be really hard this year. I prepared myself for the grief to creep up my back and into my skull. I practiced breathing into it, forcing a smile back towards it, so that my boys wouldn't notice anything but the thrill of finding their baskets and over-sugaring themselves at Grammy and Pap's house. 

It wasn't hard. I didn't really feel much. I went for a run and I drank a few beers and the kids had fun and I went to bed. 

So you can imagine my surprise when yesterday, your absence hit me like a ton of bricks, a barreling train, a knife to the throat, no creeping sadness, just crushing hurt at the disappearance of your light from my life. 

Maybe I prepared myself too well for Easter. Maybe I just didn't give myself time to allow you to cross my  mind. 

I hope you aren't hurt that I avoid dwelling on you much, but the thing is.... I can't. I lose so much time. I think of you and suddenly, it's evening and I haven't done a damn thing. I get so lost in it, the overwhelming, all-encompassing, never-ending-ness of your death. It's a lonely and shitty place to be, you know? I would have called you to talk to you about it, to see what you would say, but you're gone and I can't. And so I sit and try to summon the courage to imagine what you would say. 

It just-- it feels like I'm drowning, my body, my head under water with my clothes and hair swirling, dragging me down, and I keep reaching my hands up above the surface, waiting for you to grab on and pull me out. I'm free falling from a tall building, a tower, a ledge, and I'm not scared but I wish you would catch me. I wonder if this is what it felt like to be you. 

And, you know, I thought that the summer days and the warmth and the sunshine would make me feel better and make things seem easier, but the truth is, I miss you so much more in the light of day. I just keep expecting you to show up. I keep thinking I could call you, maybe, you would pick up, maybe I could take the boys to finally see your place and go to the park like we said a million years ago but then things always came up for one of us so I didn't ever make it. I keep hoping you'll text me and tell me you're in the area and you were thinking you might stop by if I'm home. 

And then the tears come again and I am picturing you in a million ages and I keep thinking about leaning over the casket, how I watched a tear fall onto your chest, how if this was a fairy tale, my tears would have brought you back to me. 

I wish I hadn't wasted so much of your life being mad at you. If I could go back in time, I would do it over and over again, just to be with you. 

I miss you.