To My Children

A letter to my children

I contemplate the meaning of life often. It's hard not to after being dealt the hands I have. I know I'll never truly understand most of it, but there is one thing that always stands out to me. I can't speak for anyone else, but I would be nothing with out my children. So..

Quinny the pooh, 

If you ever read this I'm sure it will not be until you are much older,  but thank you for being my son. I know I brought you into this world but you are the one that has made each day since so worth it. I'll always wonder what I did to deserve you. You are a gem in a world full of sharp rocks and when my time comes I will find peace in knowing I did the world at least one favor by bringing you into it. You have been through more at 4 years old than some will ever have to go through in their entire lives and yet you are truly the sweetest most genuine boy there is. I worry about you because you're heart is pure but the world is not and it makes me fearful for the pain you might feel because of that. I pray you stay good little boy, even when it hurts.
When your brother died everything I thought I knew about life disappeared. I spent a large majority of the last year being a poor excuse of a friend, daughter, sister, and mother. I hate so much that your brother was taken from me, but what I hate just as much is that such a large part of myself was taken from the people that love me. There were days I was ashamed to be around you because I knew in my heart I was being unfair, but I just couldn't figure out how to do anything but miss Boston. I am not proud of the last year, but I am proud that I am finally allowing myself to see the light at the end of the tunnel, you. You'll never know just how much I adore you. You save my life every day.
I love you, Quinton Andrew.

Bosty,

Where do I begin? There are so many things I want to ask you. Like how are you? Are your cheeks still fat? Did you sleep okay? Where do you sleep? Who's all up there with you? Are you excited to be a big brother? Do you know how scared I am? 

Scared because on Monday I find out if you're having a brother or sister, and that means that this is real. There is really another baby that will be joining our family, and it's not you. Sometimes it is still so hard to let go of the picture I had in my head before you left. A picture of a very happy me with my two amazing sons. I thought I was set with just you and your brother and never imagined another baby to be in that picture, let alone that you would no longer be in it at all.
I'm excited and so thankful for this new baby, but so terrified at the same time because I know how unbearable it would be to lose it. Life is so fragile, and certainly not guaranteed, but a huge part of me believes you will always be close by protecting us.
I made a decision a couple months ago that I am going to have your urn buried. I am hoping that we can have you buried with your Great Grandma Jean. I know that she is with you in heaven so it seems fitting to have you with her here too, that way I know that you are safe. It will be painful to bury you as I have thoroughly kept you with me everywhere I go, but I want you to be out of harms way. I want people to be able to walk past you and see your name and know that my darling little fatboy did exist, and most of all I want your new baby brother or sister to be able to have a place to go to visit you. They will most certainly know that they have a wonderful brother here on earth, and one that we love just as much in heaven.
I love you, Boston, and I miss you so very much.


And to my new baby,

I have so many thoughts about you that I don't know how to put into words. You came to be in a time of crisis, and you will be arriving in this world so very wanted and needed. Sometimes I think you've already met your big brother in heaven. I think he's sending me you because for reasons that make me ache, he did not get to stay with us. We have the very best angel watching over us and when the time is right I will tell you all about him. I will not love you the same as him, but I promise to love you as much as I love him. You have another big brother too. He's so happy to have you join us and you are so lucky to have him to grow with in this crazy world. I cannot wait to have you in my arms.


Blessings come with patience,
Until we meet again my baby

Just a cloud away

Oh, little boy,

I miss you so much. Your song came on the other day. It caught me off guard and I cried and cried. Sometimes I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that you are gone. When I think about you it feels surreal because you've been gone for so much longer than you were here.  
When you really know and love someone there's usually what seems to be endless tales of love and laughter and memories with them, but when I talk about you I get this grueling pain in my chest because Ive been telling the same stories for exactly 15 months, 1 week, and 2 days. There comes a point in my conversations about you where my stories come to an abrupt stop, just  like your life did. I know you more in death than I did in life.

Lately I talk more about my belief that you're surrounded by love in your Grandma Jeans arms. It seems odd to say but I feel closer to her now than I did before she joined you. She has always been a wonderful grandma but her illness made it hard for me to visit her. Seeing her made me sad and I never knew what to say because Parkinson's disease robbed her of being the grandma I adored as a child. 

She passed just two days before what would have been your 1st birthday. We knew she did not have much time left, but I could not bring myself to go see her because the thought of watching life escape from another person I loved was just too painful. 

It ate away at me the whole week, so I wrote her a letter for your grandpa to read to her. She died an hour later. In that letter I pleaded she please make sure you know how much I love you. The second my dad told me she was gone I knew that was actually what she went to do...
 I'm so proud to call her my grandma and so lucky that she is with you giving you all the love I so badly wish I could. 

Whenever the sky looks insanely beautiful, I know it's the both of you. 

I love you, Boston. Always. 

Not for the faint of heart

Life is.... So much different than I thought it would be. I don't remember taking any classes in school that taught me how much it hurts when your heart breaks, that babies die, or that even when you're trying to do right things still can and do go absolutely wrong. I don't remember a class that taught me what to do in times of crisis and tragedy, or a class that gave insight on what to do when you feel like giving up. 
Sometimes I find myself feeling bitter about this, among a long list of other things. Like maybe, just maybe, if someone would have taught me, or at least warned me, I wouldn't be making my way through life as a bereaved and broken hearted mother. Maybe this wouldn't be my story.  
The part of me that lives in reality, the part of me that watches and learns and figures things out on my own knows that's not true, but it is hard not to be bitter. It is hard to calm the fire in my heart that just wants to scream that it's so unfair that there's no do overs in life. 
Since finding out I am expecting again I've been thinking a lot about that. This baby is not a do over. This baby will not, and could not, ever replace Boston. However, it would be a lie to say the mind doesn't wander to strange places...
At my first ultrasound I was so eager to see this little new life, but I kept finding my mind going to some twisted fairy tale like place and wanting it to be Boston. I want to do Boston all over again. 
I want to go back to that place where my love for my children was still innocent and blindly hopeful.. When my heart didn't always hurt and ignorance was still bliss. I want to go back to the time when I didn't know that babies die or how hard it is to focus on the good in things after figuring out that they do...that babies can die. My baby did. 
It is hard not to think of that while once again preparing to love another child. What if I go to my next doctor appointment and something is wrong? To think of ever having to feel the awful sick to my stomach, raging, relentless pain that I felt when a nurse turned to tell me the worst on the day that Boston died has me scared out of my mind. I don't want to be scared, but I am. 
Fear follows me every where I go and I'm realizing that I'm once again learning something no one ever taught me... How to not let fear rob me of my joy.

My darling little fatboy,
I wonder if you see how much I cry these days. Some of them tears of joy, some of them tears of pain. Even though I cannot see you, please be here with me. I still need you. 
All my love,
Mommy

Ugly

Enough time has gone by for me to realize one thing; losing Boston will always be ugly. There is no way to ignore it, no way to escape it, no way to dress it up to make it feel better nor look better. It will always be the ugliest part of my life and myself. His death will always be debilitating, some hours, days, months, and years will be worse than others, but I am stuck with this nightmare until my last breath. 

Losing him cost me my mental health. I think that's one of the worst parts. So many people don't understand that mental illnesses are just as serious as physical. I'm assuming this sad fact stems from people's  lack of understanding for what they cannot see. I honestly could have never grasped the severity had I not all the sudden been plagued with them. I just hope anyone who reads this that questions how real anxiety, depression, and post traumatic stress really are can find a minute to think about how that makes the struggle harder. I suffer from and struggle with all and it is one of the most terribly frustrating things I've ever come to know. Before Boston left I never thought twice about entering a gas station or grocery store, now it takes me a couple hours to reluctantly prepare myself and sometimes that's not enough. There's still times I run out feeling like I must be in the midst of dying myself, and there's still times I can't get myself to even walk through the door in the first place. It's embarrassing as a grown woman to burst into tears in public, let alone try to explain why. 

Each time I get ready for work at some point a fit of rage consumes me, and it's the nasty kind. Throwing things, maybe a hole or two in the wall. I've never been that type and it's a scary feeling to completely lose control of my emotions and have no clue how to make it stop. 

I'm thankful for the few people in my life who have stuck by my side through it all. It's unfortunate but true that loving me is no walk in the park and I pray the amazing souls that still do know that I am trying... 

Im here, just in the throws of figuring out how to function with such an ugly reality always looming over my head...

No Boston. No happy voices filling my home. No fairy god parents or a genie in a bottle to magically fix the pitiful mess my life has become. Just me, a box of memories, enough fear and anxiety to last a million lifetimes, and an urn that holds whats left of the little boy who stole my heart and took it to the other side of heaven. 

I love you, Bosty. Every minute of every day I am dreaming of the glorious moment I get to hold you and tell you that. 

Now what

Written on 3-20-16

The irony of my son dying on St. Patrick's day is torture. Talk about bad luck...

All the Facebook posts, every store I went into in the weeks leading up to it, every person I spoke to, everything reminded me of just how easily the world went on without my Bosty. 

While I was dying inside, everyone else was partying, dressing up in green, and basking in their hopes of good luck. I don't believe in luck anymore, but I do believe there is life after death. In all the excruciating hours I have spent racking my brain as to why life is so damn painful, all I have come up with is this; my time on earth is just a chapter. A state of being that will some day escape me, but my struggle here on earth will be far from the end of my story. When I cross over to the other side a new kind of life will start for me... One where heartbreak no longer controls me, one with my chubbles at my side, a life with my son that no one can take away from me. 

So, to the sweetest boy I've ever known,

I cannot believe a whole year has gone by. One that felt like an entire lifetime, but where it escaped to I'm not sure. Last year on this very day at this very time I was standing next to your casket at Miller funeral home doing the only thing I knew how to do.. Take care of you. Every single part of me still aches to do that.

 This year has been one from the depths of hell and society's opinions on grief and where I "should" be are far from the reality of where Im actually at. I didn't just lose you that day, I lose you every day in each moment that you should be by my side, but you're not.  Some days I can breathe and make it through without terrible thoughts of your death crippling me, other times weeks will go by without me leaving the house. There is one thing that always stays the same.. I want you back. I want to know you. I want to know what would make you smile, make you upset, sad, laugh, cry, sleepy, literally everything. I'm not sure how I will ever come to terms with the fact that I don't get to do that. 

Every time I'm convinced I truly understand you're gone, another anniversary creeps by and I realize just how much I have begged and prayed and somehow believed you would have came back by now, but here I am with empty arms and those same 68 days of memories that I'm forced to make last a life time. 

My heart hurts every day, but that pain never dulls how completely I love you. 

I will always, always, be proud of you Boston. 

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.