"A mother is not defined by the number of children you see, but by the love she holds in her heart."

This week has been one from hell. I've had people ask me how I do it, and tell me that they're proud, and while it is ever so kind to say that, I am silently screaming on the inside. Can't I just be a normal mom? One that has both of her children with her and goes unrecognized? I don't want to have a dead child. I don't want people to be proud that I somehow still get out of bed each morning. I want to go back to normal. Normal as in both of my children falling asleep next to me each night. Normal as in waking up with Boston here, not having to dream of what he would look like. Normal as in not being anxiety stricken each moment of the day staring at the clock knowing that when 3:46 PM comes, I die inside a little more each time because that is when I was told my son could not be saved. When I think of the day he died and his funeral it's like I am watching from someone else's eyes. That wasn't me was it? I'm not that mom standing over her baby's casket, am I? I'm not the mom walking out of the hospital without her child? I'm not the mom driving away from the church where her baby's body is parked out front in a hearse? I'm not the mom going to pick up her sons ashes? Am I?
Oh, but I am. It was me. It was my son. I am now the mom that cringes when I walk past baby items at the store. I am now the mom that has to remind herself to breathe when seeing other mothers out in public with their two children. I am the mother who wants to cry each time I pick my son up from daycare, because I should be bringing two home, not just one.

I wish more than anything someone could send me a picture, just drop one down from heaven and let me see what my little fatboy would look like. I guess I have rare moments of very brief "strength" and feel like there's no way this pain will always be this intense, but then I think of the fact that my only hopes of seeing him will be when I die. I'm not really afraid of death anymore. I am constantly afraid of things happening to my loved ones, but knowing that I will die someday no longer frightens me. The scary part is life until then. What if I don't die until I'm 90? That would be 68 years without my son. 68 birthdays that would come and go without him here. Decades upon decades of holidays that I will spend all too aware that there should be one more precious face there to celebrate with. I never get to buy my son a birthday present. I never get to celebrate his first Christmas. I never get to hear him laugh. I don't care how many times I've been told that there's no way I could have known, or that I couldn't have done anything differently. I WANT A REDO. I want to go back to March 17th and just do something different. I don't even know what because it started like any other normal day, but I feel like there has to be something, even if it was the most minuscule thing, that could have been done to save me from the constant torture my life is now filled with. If there is one thing I know, it's that babies are not supposed to die.

I am very nervous for Wednesday. We are having a tree planted in his memory and I am going to bury some of his ashes with it. While I want to do this to honor him, I feel like I did when waiting for the day of his funeral to arrive. I know he's dead and all that's left are his ashes, but I don't want to put my baby in the ground. He does not belong there. That's why I decided to get him cremated. At first the thought of him being cremated made me feel like I myself was dying, but then I thought about how hard getting him buried would be. I did not want to go to bed each night knowing my sons body was somewhere besides home and all alone. Not that I don't understand other parents decisions, because I do, and there is no right from wrong when deciding where your child will "rest." I just know that each time I look outside it will scare me. Is he cold? What about when it's snowing or raining or storming? It's just not fair. WHY ISNT HE HERE WITH ME!? Who can I scream at and let know just how much living without him hurts? Every day I think it can't get any worse, but then I wake and the calendar marks another days start without the boy I thought I couldn't live with out.

As I was writing this I found out that a very close family friends nephew fractured his skull and is under going brain surgery. On Friday my sons grandpa died in a tragic motorcycle accident. Last week my grandpa was admitted to the hospital. On Tuesday someone that many of my friends knew committed suicide. On Thursday a precious little girl who's mother I know joined my son as an angel baby. When is enough, enough!? I always knew that people die, but I am so sick of death lurking right around the corner. I pray that Bosty is with my friends nephew, and that the ones no longer here embrace him for me. Life is far more fragile than I ever knew. I always thought I was someone who is optimistic, but that is no longer true. Tragedy has paralyzed me, and I don't think a day will ever come that worry doesn't rob me of joy.

There has been one question that seems to be stuck in my mind lately; Why didn't the world come running when my son died? People flood the news and social media with outrageous and senseless acts like " The Kylie Jenner Lip Challenge", celebrities doing minuscule every day things that no one should even care about, fights between reality "TV stars", rioting and "white verse black crime" that eggs on the racism that shouldn't even exist by pointing out race in any and every situation they can. So I am left here wondering if people all over the world can make huge deals out of ridiculous things THEN WHY DIDNT THEY COME RUNNING WHEN MY SON DIED? Or when any child does !? People don't seem to think twice about sharing and advocating their supposedly credible opinions about what some celebrity wore or why it's okay for people in Baltimore to destroy their city to prove a point because they've been "treated unfairly." Want to know what's unfair? I had to watch my beautiful son die. I have to live the rest of my life without him in a world that cares more about idiotic materialistic fads than the unexplainable deaths of children, and the explainable ones caused by abuse and neglect. The world pours over all of these fixable situations that wouldn't exist if each and every person on this earth realized that being genuinely good hearted and loving is far easier than being heartless and

narrow minded.

There's a cure for racism. There's not a cure for SIDS, or childhood cancers (except for chemotherapy which is grueling and harmful at the same time) or the far too long list of childhood diseases that claim the lives of way too many precious sons and daughters all over America and the world each year. So if you want to talk about unfair, why don't you talk about the forgotten mothers and fathers that get up each morning after having their child taken from them in a casket. If you want to get mad, get mad at the fact that people like the kardashians have millions upon millions of dollars at their disposal, but there's not enough funding or publicity to research and find cures to save children from dying. If you want to share something, share a picture of a child that's passed away because I promise you the only thing bereaved parents have to hold on to is the hope that their loved ones, friends, family, acquaintances, and the rest of the world do not let the fact that their child DID exist go unnoticed. Children are the future, help save them instead of contributing to the world falling apart. I didn't get to save my son, but I will spend the rest of my life trying to save anyone else from knowing what that feels like.

"The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal, every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider a duty to keep open; this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude." - Washington Irving, The Sketch Book.