Promises

Owen,

Once again you have sent me a gift.

This year as your birthday & death day approached I have found myself wanting to hibernate. I wanted to snuggle down into my bed, pull the covers over my head and just close my eyes until these difficult days are over, but I will not.  I have responsibilities to your brother and sisters, to your father and our friends, to myself and to you. Promises that I made to you that I intend to keep. So I will get out of bed and put my feet on the floor. We will have cake and tell stories about you; what and who you looked like, who we thought you might be. We will laugh and sing and dance. I will celebrate you today. I will remember the promises we made each other.


Love,
Mom

On your Sixth Birthday, you sent me a gift

Owen,

I had the most beautiful experience today while visiting your grave. I drove up there this morning after dropping your brother & sisters at camp. I stopped along the way and picked up the flowers I had ordered for you and your Grandma. It is beautiful day, warm and sunny but dry, and the sky is a clear blue that seems to go on forever. In the car, I was surrounded by that blue and the smell of the flowers, and I kept feeling like I should feel some awe or joy in the beauty of the day. I should have been celebrating you, but my heart was heavy this morning. I was sad and tired and my chest actually hurt. I was feeling like I just wanted to get this visit over with, to get this whole day over with. I arrived at the cemetery and parked in front of your stone. I trimmed the grass around, pulled some stray weeds and cleaned the marker, all the while feeling numb and heartsick. I got to my feet, took the flowers from the trunk and placed them at your head. I stepped back and looked down at your stone and the flowers and my chest felt tighter and heavier. I just felt like I couldn't breathe, like I couldn't do this for one more minute.

And that's when it happened. A single yellow butterfly landed briefly on your flowers. It was large, probably almost the size of my palm with its wings spread wide. In that split second, where I thought, "I should take a picture", it flew over and landed on my chest. I looked down at it sitting there on me and felt peace. I took a deep breath and it fluttered off up into the sky. I was left with that sense of peace. I do not know if the butterfly carried your spirit, or was sent by you, or Mom, or G-d, or none of those things. I know only that I went there feeling so very dark and alone, and there, by your graveside, into that darkness came a light.

Happy Birthday

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.