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.
People have amassed shrines for years. In Prague there is a wall dedicated to John Lennon; flowers and photos adorn the gates of Princess Diana’s home in London; an eternal flame shines for the unknown soldier; Shinto shrines celebrate wind, rain, mountains, trees and rivers; we bury our dead and mark the grave with a headstone….we want a marker of those things valuable and important to us. That is how we feel about our dead children; we don’t want our children to be forgotten, we must remember them, others must remember them. My son's boots are my shrine to him. His boots are the only thing left from his accident. They sit there, worn but whole, and I see him, I think of him, I remember him, I love him. His boots do that for me….they create an instant recall of him, his person, his character, his life. Don’t tell me to put the boots away, don’t tell me that is it unhealthy to hold on to things that recall his memory…it is...
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