Nightmares

At times I have a lot to say about my son being gone and others my mind is blank, but the pain in my heart is consistent and overwhelming. It screams with each beat "I WANT MY BABY." I miss him so much, there are just no words to do the relentless ache I have for his presence any justice. I often find myself conflicted as to whether I want to scream, cry, or pack all I could possibly fit into my car and drive as far away as possible. Given the rage that is now an every day part of my life, I continue to shock myself with the fact that all I really do is lay in bed and stare off into the emptiness that should be filled with my son. I went out for the first time since Boston passed away last night. I'm very thankful for the close friends that were there with me. In ways it went better than expected, however, the thought never left my mind that I so much would have rather been at home with my Bosty. I don't want to be able to have the free time to "do what I want." I want my weekends to be filled with the precious time I had alone with him since his big brother stays with his dad on Fridays and Saturdays. Quinton absolutely adored Boston and was such an amazing big brother, but I always looked forward to the weekends and being able to just sit and enjoy my time with him without any interruptions. He completed me. After having him everything just felt right. My sons were the two halves that made me whole and now that he is gone there will never be anything that can fill that void. It is the most helpless feeling on earth knowing that there is nothing I can do to take that pain away. I can attempt to distract myself, but my heart will never beat the same. Instead of thumping with the consistent joy he brought into my life, it is now off beat and the fact that it still beats at all feels so horribly wrong. A lot of people have told me how strong I am, but they are wrong. I am weak, disoriented, and lost. The only way I could find my way out of the mess my life has become is if Boston was still here.

Up until a week or so ago when I was finally able to get his belongings back from the hospital, I slept with the sleeper I changed him out of before taking him to daycare that morning. Now that I have his blanket and the outfit he was wearing at the hospital, I sleep with them. It breaks my heart. Each night while I lay in bed with his stuff I beg him to come visit me in my dreams, and I literally mean beg. I also always say "Bosty, please come lay with mommy. I miss you." There has been a few times where I am quite positive that I truly felt him here with me, or that I will randomly smell his wonderful baby scent for a moment and feel like it is his way of letting me know that he is there. As far as dreaming of him goes, the ones I have had are devastating and far from what I hope for each night before I go to sleep. To save anyone reading this from the true morbid-ness that has invaded my dreams, I suppose I could sum them up with the fact that each time I have dreamt of him he is still dead, but instead of having him cremated I brought him home with me and am continuously angry at someone for moving or touching him because I'm afraid that he will break. I want these type of dreams to leave and never come back. I want to see my chubby spit bubble blowing Bosty, not the one that was taken from me in a casket. I am often angry with myself because regardless of how many times I watch the videos I have of him or go through his pictures trying to force the good memories into my brain, my mind has become some awful broken record that is stuck on the horrible ones of seeing him dead. At least at the hospital it still looked like him, besides the off color of his skin and how cold he was, but it was still him and just looked like he was sleeping. I am not at all trying to speak illy of the funeral home, they were very good to my family and I and I know they did the very best they could, but it just did not look like him. I'm not sure what I was expecting to walk in and see at his visitation, but I recall the sheer terror I felt the second I saw him because it was not the Bosty that I adore laying there in front of me. His cheeks were no longer the chubby ones that I loved so much, his eyes lids were sunken in, and his head was slightly off in shape. Even though it was so upsetting seeing him that way, I wanted so badly to bring him home with me. I wanted to grab him from his casket, run right out the door and keep him with me forever. It sounds incredibly crazy, but when we left his funeral the hearse was parked right out in front of the church with his casket in it and I literally had to talk myself out of trying to get it out and into my car. The following quote is from the article "Parental Grief And A SIDS Death" that I shared the link to in my last blog post.

"Probably the most stressful and anxiety-provoking act in human existence is the separation of a woman from her infant. The response to this, which humans share with most of the animal kingdom, is an overwhelming combination of panic, rage, and distress." -Ruskin, in Horchler and Morris, 1994, 16.

I would dismantle me to put you back together again.