20 days

In 20 days I will wake up with no choice but to recall the absolute terror that came barging into my life last St Patricks day. The thought makes me sick... Physically and mentally. I've been reflecting on the last year of my life quite often lately. I couldn't tell you much besides I'm still here breathing. Some days I feel like a complete and utter waste, mostly because the only thing I can say for sure is I've spent every single day staring at the walls missing my son, besides that I've contributed just about nothing to this world. 

A year having passed makes a lot of questions arise that I haven't allowed myself to think about recently, simply because they are just too painful. 

Questions like where is my baby? Why is this still real? Can I just have him back, please? Does he miss me? Does he know that I'm his mom? Does he know how much I would give to have him in my arms one more time? Does he know how much better I was prior to his death? That I use to be enjoyable to be around? That I use to be funny? Or does he see the me now, the broken one? Does his head still turn at the sound of his brothers voice? Does he know I still sleep with his blanket and sleeper every night? How many people I've told how absolutely perfect he was? How much the good memories make me smile? How much I ache for his presence? How much I wish I knew what he would look like now?  How much I absolutely despise the fact that it has almost been a year since I've seen his beautiful face? How much I cry? How much I hurt? How much I hope he feels no pain being away from me, but how much I hope he knows he is still so wanted and loved here on earth? How guilty I feel for ever having left him at daycare? The ugly roads my mind has traveled down thinking of the woman that did this to us? That I cannot wait for the day I get to be with him again? That I just want him back with every single ounce of my being? 

I love you, Bosty. So so much. I can't describe how much I hold onto the hope that I will get to say that to your face again someday. 

All of my love,

Mommy

Waiting

Bosty,

I have been having a really hard time lately. Even seeing your pictures on the wall makes me feel like someone punched me in the stomach. It takes the breath right out of me. Almost like I can't even see straight and have to sit down to gather myself just enough to make it to my room where I can let myself cry where Q won't see. 

There was once a time that I thought I would never have another child because I didn't think it was possible to love someone as much as I love your brother. I cannot lie and say fear didn't invade my thoughts when I first found out I was expecting you, but after the initial shock, a feeling of calmness set in. I needed you, and everything about you ended up being so right for us. I will cherish the short lived peace I felt having you both in my arms for the rest of my life.

I can't seem to find a way to feel right about anything. There is a constant war inside of me and it's one that seems hopeless, because having you made me realize how wrong I use to be thinking I couldn't share the genuine love I have for him with another child. Love is a hard thing to describe and I've been sitting here for awhile trying to figure out how to put this into words, they don't do justice to what I feel in my heart but...

I love your brother for making my world go round. He always has. He is truly my saving grace, and I wouldn't be here with out him. He is the kick in my step, the only reason Ive been able to take another breath, the face I see when I can see nothing else. He melts the coldness in me, the parts that don't want to feel. He thaws them out each time he tells me what he learned at school, each time he says "Mom, will you come sit with me", each time he kisses me on the cheek and tells me to have sweet dreams, my heart feels a little less frozen. He saves my life every day. 

And you, my chubbles, you made the sun rise. You were that refreshing reminder that every time the sun set, no matter how long the day, no matter the things not yet accomplished, that the sun would surely find it's way back into the sky and give another chance to do things right. 

But now I am sitting here, like I have been for 10 and a half months. My world is still spinning because of your truly wonderful big brother, but the sun hasn't risen for me in a long time. 

I'm just stuck, staring out this stupid window wondering if a day will ever come that actually feels like a new day... 

I miss you so much, Boston. 

1 year old

I wrote this a few days ago on January 9th, my sons 1st birthday. 

My darling little Bosty,

How did I get here? Back to January 9th? How have 365 days, 8760 hours, and 525600 minutes gone by since I first laid eyes on you? A year that started off with my heart so full of love turned out to be the darkest, loneliest time I've ever known, and that feeling is so far from over. 

I can feel my heart in my chest because it is unbelievably heavy and I miss you so much that it hurts to be awake, to just sit, to do anything at all. I want to stop time. I need the world to let me catch up a little bit. Not that I'll ever be ready, but the fact that 1 year ago I gave birth to you means that in just 68 days it will be a whole year since you left me. A whole year since I held you, a whole year since the day I was broken to unrepairable extents. People think I should be getting to a better place but it hurts just as bad, I'm just getting use to having a broken heart. 

I don't know how to explain it correctly, but there's just this thing that stays with me. Even on the days when I can function better than I use to be able to, this awful "thing" stays with me right there under the surface. It controls everything I do. On the days it makes it's existence impossible to ignore I don't leave my house, I don't get out of bed, I don't talk to anyone. I lay there crying. Other days I think I have it under control until out of no where it decides to cripple me. I've left carts filled with groceries in the middle of an isle and ran, Ive pulled into random parking lots in the middle of driving somewhere and sat there for hours, I've had tears suddenly flood my eyes waiting in line at the gas station, all because of this terrible, truly horrific "thing." I'm living with a monster inside of me and there's really just no way to get it out.

It never fails to shock me how cruel life can be. I don't want this. I don't want to be this person, I don't want to feel this way, I don't want how alone living with out you makes me to eat away at everything I use to be, but it does. I'm really nothing but a walking broken heart and I've found that while trying to pick up those pieces, more fall. 

I try to tell myself I need to let myself smile and enjoy things, but the only thing that could make me smile is you. I'll never understand why it had to be you, why it had to be our family, why this had to happen at all, but I'll always understand how genuinely I adore you, how completely I love you, and how much you changed my life.

 I would give anything to sit in the recliner upstairs at your grandmas with your head laying on my chest while Quin repeatedly requests that I tell you how much he loves you. It was the happiest I've ever been.

Someday, fatboy, someday....

Loner

Bosty, 

I cannot describe how it feels to know you would now be 11 months old... I should be sad because you're getting so big, not because I never get to see you get big. It's just so unfair. I don't know where exactly I thought I would be at this point, but not here. Probably because at first I just thought that you would come back and I wouldn't have to figure it out, but you're still not back...and I'm so far from figuring it out. 

I could say it a million times, in a million ways, every single day for the rest of my life but it wouldn't matter... No one will ever fully understand how much my heart aches for you. Every loss is different. You were mine and there was never and never will be another you. People like you only happen one time, Bosty. Why you couldn't have graced this earth for at least 68 years instead of only 68 days is something I'll never find peace with...

I am stuck in a world infested with a society that doesn't recognize grieving in it's many forms, and though people typically mean well, when it comes down to it they are not accepting of my struggles. Far and few between even ask how I am doing these days, and when they do they're gone before I can even answer. I've come to find it's because they really just don't want to actually know. The answers are too painful to understand. They want to do what's socially acceptable and morally correct by asking, but they don't want to sit here and witness my pain first hand. No one wants to see the anger, sadness, tragedy, or the shockingly ugly depths I travel through each day. If they ask, it's because they feel obligated, but their responses can be summed up as "I feel sorry for you, but you're on your own."

Please send me a sign, fatboy. I would give anything to go back to the picture below... You and your brother completed me, now half of that is gone forever. I have days that I can't open my mouth without choking on tears and feeling like someone kicked me in the stomach... Today is one if those days. I pray that "woman" knows it's so very far from over. 

"There is, I am convinced, no picture that conveys in all it's dreadfulness, a vision of sorrow, remediless, supreme. If I could paint such a picture, the canvas would show only a woman looking down at her empty arms."

Instead

Every time I look outside I want to cry. Winter, the snow, the holidays...All any of it represents to me is that the anniversary's of your life and death are coming. When I first lost you I thought about them often and how I couldn't imagine really making it to the day that should be your wonderful first birthday party with presents and cake and what I imagine would be a very chubby, smiling you. Instead I will probably lay in bed with your urn and beg you for a sign you're out there so I can blow you a kiss and have faith you get to catch it. 

I've realized I grew up with this image in my head that things would someday just work out. Like all of the sudden I would wake up in a happy home with the person I love and my children and things would be how they're suppose to be, just like that.

That's really a terrible way to think because life has definitely proven me wrong in the most awful of ways, but my mind still always ends on the thought that there has to be a rewind button. Somewhere, somehow, there just has to be, because every single part of me aches to go back to that day. To wake up and feed my little fatboy, but go back to bed afterwards instead. Instead of getting ready for work. Instead of changing their clothes. Instead of putting Bosty in his car seat. Instead of unknowingly driving my son to his death. I would truly give literally anything to go back to that moment squished in between the two halves that made me whole, close my eyes and go back to sleep. 

I miss you so much, Boston. It is excruciating. I spent a lot of time trying to tell myself that one of these days I will wake up to something besides feeling my heartbreak. Thinking somehow, maybe, I could convince myself it's not really this bad, but it is. I think I am learning though. Learning that my "it will just go away" life style isn't a life style and doesn't exist. It's absolutely something I would give anything not to know about, but that's the thing...I do. Trying to ignore that is more torture to my already ripped apart soul. I have to miss you. I have to wonder. I have to cry. I have to let myself be completely horribly broken, because you can't fix anything that you won't acknowledge is broken in the first place. Not to mention you were perfect, and when you fall in love with perfect, anything less is so terribly tragic to have to live with. 

I love you, I love you, I love you, 

and someday I won't have to miss you. That is what I hold onto...

A letter to my mother

Mom,

Thank you. For a million reasons really, but here are a few. Thank you for all the love you give my children. For all the times you'd sit next to me with your hand on my belly waiting to feel them kick. For all the times you'd say "Okay, I'm ready for that baby to come!" For all the times I'd walk through your door and you'd say "Well, I did get this for the baby..." and then come out of your room with something truly adorable for one of them. For all the times you helped me with Q when I was sick while pregnant with Bosty. Thank you for watching survivor with me and the bachelor, I looked forward to those nights and skinny pop popcorn. Thank you for being genuinely delighted when my water broke and bringing me to the hospital. Thank you for staring for hours at Boston with me. For the mornings you would come grab him out of my room so I could sleep a little bit longer. For rocking him while I got us all ready for bed. For the last Saturday he was with us and we had to go get Stacy and you made him smile from ear to ear after I put him in his car seat. I will remember it forever. Thank you for being the one to pick him up that day. I'm so sorry you hold that nightmare with you, but I don't think I could have taken that pain. Thank you for making all the phone calls I couldn't have made myself. For greeting everyone at his visitation because all I could do is stand by his casket and sing to him. For being the one to play with Q because I didn't have it in me to get out of bed for months after Bosty left, even though I know you didn't want to either. Thank you for knowing how much I miss my baby. For knowing how wonderful he was. For loving us, and I hope you know how much we love you too.

My babies are so truly lucky to have you as their grandma.

The truth hurts

I cringe every time I look at a photo of myself. Whoever said that when you lose a child there's only one way you categorize things from that point on: before the death and after, was absolutely correct. I despise that difference. By no means was everything perfect in my life before Boston passed, but it didn't matter because I had him and Quinton. For once in my life I was content. I look at the few pictures I've been in since his death and it's like there is nothing behind my eyes. Eyes tell stories, but mine are empty. I can't help but wonder if the glint in them will ever return, but I don't really think it will. 

Losing a child robs you of a million moments, a million memories, a million feelings. It leaves you terrified, heartbroken, and the light I use to have in me is no longer there. It's off searching through the darkness trying to find my baby... I really just want my son. 

Life and people have been terribly hard to deal with lately because losing a child also results in being labeled as the person who must just be crazy because they lost a child... And so many people "can't imagine" what we're going through. I honestly think what I've been through (in some ways) makes me more sane than most, and before you think "Okay, she's really lost it" please hear me out. I don't live in ignorance. There is a black hole of truth you get thrown into when you experience such a traumatic loss. 

You don't get to go home and pretend that everything's okay and I've learned that people really don't like it when you're real. It makes them uncomfortable. 

They'd rather go home and pretend that pain like this doesn't exist because they don't have to deal with it. I don't get to do that. There's truly no pretending here. The face I literally ache to see each day is only in pictures on my wall. The sleeper I woke up and put on my unbelievably adorable son on his last day lays on my pillow along with the blanket he had with him. There is little bits of the clay that they used to make the mold of his hand stuck to it's sleeves. In my closet there is a huge chest where I keep things of his that I will cherish forever. His car seat is sitting by the door of my bed. I don't get to pretend because no matter where I am or where I go, my baby boy isn't there. 

Just try to imagine that... but you can't right? Well, I don't have to imagine. This is my life. My baby. My broken heart. My broken family.

I will spend the rest of my life trying to find ways to make Boston's name live on in a positive light, but I will never speak anything less than the reality of how truly awful losing him has been. 

To the sweetest boy I've ever known...I miss you with every breath that I take.