Living with Loss

I realized that I'm not the person I was before January 1, 2010.  To complicate it all, I'm not so sure I want to be that person. That person had family, had a child, knew love, enjoyed life and this person that I am now has no family, no child, has no confidence in love and no ability to enjoy life as it is.  You see that person is too much for me to internalize, too painful to recall...I have to move forward without her...if only I knew how.

Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You trace my journeys and my resting places and are acquainted with all my ways. Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, but you, O Lord, know it altogether. You press upon me behind and before and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I can not attain to it. Where can I go then from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I climb up to heaven, you are there; if I make the grave my bed, you are there also. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea. Even there your hand will lead me and our right hand hold me fast. If I say, "Surely the darkness will cover me, and the light around me turn to night." Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike. Search me out, O God, and know my heart...

It was a rough night.  One of those nights when I felt the sting of Wyatt's death, the manifestation of his absence and the profound changes it brought to my existence. I cried for hours and tried to stifle the tears and shield myself from the sheer agony that arose from within my soul. I longed for a comforter but couldn't ask for one. I hurt more than the body could handle, and when that happens there is no choice but to shut down. There are moments in this journey when closing my mind to life if all I can do to survive. All I know is the pain of Wyatt's death and his absence from this world is no less pronounced now than before and sometimes it seems greater.

I've been thinking about how the death of your child or grandchild can affect your life. I think this loss changes us irrevocably. There is a pain so deep, so foreign to heart and mind, so intense that when experienced we are no longer the person we were just moments before. I am no longer Mom .  My mother is no longer Memaw.  My mother-in-law is no longer Grandmother .  People may say that no one can take that from you; but someone did. My son will never call out to me again and yell..." Hey, Mom ..." I will never bake him a cake or purchase him a little gift I think he'd enjoy, he will never again wrap his arms around me and lift me into the air just because he could and to hear me laugh, he will never again say thank you or I love you. My mother will never hear him say, " Hi Memaw , for of nine grandchildren, that was his name for her, only Wyatt called her Memaw . My mother-in-law had one grandchild, just one, our Wyatt. She will never again hear him on the ...