July

Owen,
It is once again July.  It sneaks up on me now. I lose track of the days and then find myself short-tempered, emotional, angry and just plain tired.  As always, it takes me longer that it should to piece together why. I should be used to this by now. I should know that just as the days get hotter and we start to relax into summer, I will stumble back into this place. A place where you are so close to me and yet so very far away. I will come back here to sit with you on my mind and in my heart, but never in my arms.

In 15 days, it will have been 6 years since I held you in my arms. Today every one of them feels like a lifetime.

Where were you then?

Five years ago today, right about now, I was at the cemetery about to bury my son. My sweet tiny little boy was inside a white coffin just three feet in front of me and all I wanted to do was go and take him out. I remember honestly fretting about how we had him dressed, whether he would be too hot or too cold. I really just wanted to hold him. I still just want to hold him. 5 years.

Now we are five

Owen, this morning I woke early and watched the sunrise, as I do every year on the day of your birth. Its a quiet time when the rest of the world falls away and again it is just me and you, as it was in those final moments before your birth five years ago.

 I try so hard to celebrate you and some years like this one, it is difficult. Some years I am selfish and angry and want to scream at the heavens. "It was not enough. It is not enough!" I want my son here with me.

Some years I find comfort in believing in heaven. In believing that one day I will enter heaven and you will at last be handed to me. That I will be able see you and smell you and memorize you all over again. That I will never again have to let you go.

Some years it is too hard to believe in anything. Then I look at science and statistics and just shake my head. Those numbers mean nothing and I cannot find you there.

Every year I turn to the sunrise. I sit in silence.

I hold my breath and wish that I was holding you.

1826

At the beginning, I often wondered where I would, who I would be all these days later. I would read blogs of women who had lost children years in the past and find them completely overwhelming.

I wanted the grief to be something I survived, past tense. But, I know now that it does not work that way. The grief and sorrow I feel about losing, holding and burying my son does not change. It is a constant. What changes is me.

I grow stronger and carrying him with me gets easier. Not everyday of course, like anything else, I have days when I am tired, or sick or sad and it feels so very hard and heavy. But, there are also ones where I feel strong and capable, where carrying him with me feels good and right.

I am learning that there really is no past tense of grieve. I will always grieve for Owen. Losing him will never be over, not as long as I am living. When I go back and read that, it stops me a bit. It sounds so dark and sad.

And there are days, like today, that it is. 5 years later.

Missing You

Missing you now is more
than an empty ocean,
crashing on a jagged shoreline.
It's more
than the open plains fields of wheat,
beaten down after the latest storm.
It's deeper
than the darkened cavern,
damp and dripping, heavy 
with the smell of stagnant water.

Missing you now is screaming
across the canyon,
waiting for an echo that does not come.
It's scrambling
for a grip, tumbling down the rocky cliffside.
It's thrashing
on the bottom of the ocean
watching that last bubble

fighting toward the surface.

Three

Owen, shortly after you died and were born, a colleague of your father's sent us a wind chime. It has an angel on the top and a pendant with your name and birthday engraved on it.

When looking for a place to hang the wind chime, we discovered a nail sticking out of an enormous maple tree in our backyard. We hadn't put the nail there and had never noticed it before. We hung the wind chime from that nail and in the years since I have come to think of that as your tree. When I look up from the kitchen sink, I can see your tree. As I open and close the blinds in my bedroom each day, your tree is both first thing I see in the morning on waking and the last at night before sleeping.

Yesterday, one large leafy green sprout appeared at the bottom of that tree. This morning when I opened the blinds, I discovered it had blossomed into the most incredible purple flower.

Happy Birthday little man, you are never forgotten.

Rain

After over a week of gorgeous sunny summer days, I woke up this morning to a dull gray rain. Finally, it feels as if the world mourns with me, and for that I am thankful. Mother Nature and I, we have not forgotten. We still grieve the loss of a tiny boy with wavy brown hair and big feet.

Tomorrow it will be three years. Still I say your name. Owen, my Owen. I carry you with me.