Thinking of you

Bosty, 

I guess you could say I've been in deep thought about just about everything in my life lately. Probably because in a short amount of time your baby brother will be arriving and that brings a lot of change into our lives, and for me it means facing a lot of things that scare me. 

In all of this thinking I've been doing there are two things I can't get off my mind; peace and acceptance. These words are used a lot in the after math of death and the process of grieving and "moving forward". 

At first I would stare at people in shock that they could even suggest I would ever find peace or acceptance. Now, 20 months later I have  a better understanding of why people say these things and where they are coming from, however, acceptance is the one that I to this day despise and probably always will. 

I find it frustratingly inappropriate to use in terms of the death of a child. 

In my life I have accepted help, apologies, gifts, differences in opinions, things of that sort, but I do not accept your death. 

I understand that you are gone. I understand that life does go on. I understand that it's okay to find happiness, but I do not "accept" any part of the who, what, when, where, why, and how of your passing. 

To me reaching a state of acceptance would be like me saying it is okay that you are gone, and that's certainly something I will never be okay with. Even though I no longer live in denial, I no longer cling to misery, and I no longer expect or even beg to wake up from the nightmare that your death was and still is, I do not accept it. 

I wish people would try to look at it as a form of understanding. I understand I have to miss you until the day that I die. I understand that means years of birthdays where cake and presents aren't involved, years of holidays that I will spend trying to focus on what is in front of me instead of what's missing, and many years of failing in my attempts to do so. I understand that this Christmas  instead of picking out presents for you, I am awaiting the arrival of your headstone. I understand that I wouldn't even know what to buy you because you left before I got the chance to know what you would like. I understand that I am strong enough to survive, but I am not strong enough to accept. How could I? 

Im not as reluctant or put off by "the finding peace" part because I can now say I have found bits of peace in my life, but it would be a lie to say that I'm actually at peace with your death. Maybe if someone can sit me down when I finally join you and say that there was a profound reason that you were taken from me in that moment then my heart could find true peace...but not a moment sooner. You will never see me wave a white flag when it comes to your passing.

I've been waiting for the right time to pursue justice when it comes to the who, what, when, where, why, and how of why you are gone. There have been times I was convinced I was ready, only to find myself utterly overwhelmed and once again drowning in your death after one conversation with lawyers. It's something that I've wanted to do since the moment I found out the circumstances of that day were terribly different than I had been told, but it's also something I have to make sure I am strong enough to do. I have to make sure I have enough joy to balance how painful recalling everything is, and I think I'm almost there. 

I hope I'm making you proud, I am really trying. Lord knows I'll always be proud of you. I love you, Bosty.

Some things just don't change

Bosty,

I really miss you. Not that there is ever a time that I don't, but lately I can't seem to get how badly I want to hold you again out of my head. I go to the cemetery every day and each time I leave feeling a little helpless, like there really should be somewhere or someone I could go to and demand I see you, and that you should be handed to me and then the pain of the last year and a half would just disappear. 

When I actually allow myself to think of how wonderful it would be to do that, it eats away at me and threatens to wipe away the "healing" I have done, because when I think about how wonderful it would be I am slapped in the face with the reality of how awful not having you is. 

It's something I don't think of constantly like I use to. Maybe because of how much time has gone by, maybe because I finally realized living with the hope of something that won't ever happen makes me completely miserable. There are so many unanswered questions that will be taken to my grave with me. 

I am still glad to say there have been many happy things going on lately. Yesterday was your big brothers birthday. He turned 5! Tomorrow I get to have an ultrasound and see what I'm assuming will be chubby cheeks that look a lot like yours and Qs. Not to mention our little baby P will be arriving in a few months and I have all of the happy, excited, and anxious feelings I had with you and your big brother, but some sad and slightly guilty ones too.  

I love your baby brother and the hope he gives me for brighter days, but that light will never be able to completely fill the darkness that your death brought into my life because even though I will have another beautiful face to wake up to again, it does not change that yours still will not be there. In all the happiness and joy I find in the the things I have to look forward to with your brothers, the underlining and profound ache I have to see you do the same never goes away. 

You're truly irreplaceable and I will spend the rest of my life fighting a never ending battle of trying to balance joy with pain.

I love you, my little fat boy. Come see me in my dreams. 

Nightmares

Bosty, 

I am exhausted. I've found it's almost impossible to sleep since having your ashes buried, and when I do I have awful dreams. Mostly about going to the cemetery only to find that your grave is no longer there. The worst one was a couple nights ago and in it I had gone to the cemetery and was brought into a weird room filled with news reporters by some man and told that I had buried you alive. 
I'm not sure if it's the dreams or the fact that I am not use to not having you with me but my anxiety has taken a turn for the worst again. I did not realize how much comfort having you with me brought until now. It's so hard to know what is right when you lose a child, because in reality nothing is right about it. Parents are not suppose to lose their children. It goes against the natural order of life and it makes everything so damn hard.
 I'm sure with time I will "get use to" where you are now, but as ridiculous as it may sound you being gone did not feel as permanent when being with you didn't require a trip to your grave. 
I really do try to stay positive but sometimes, especially lately,  I just want to throw myself on the ground like an angry toddler and kick and scream and cry. I am fed up with carrying the weight of your death with me. I am fed up with being scared and nervous and constantly worried. I am fed up with having to live with out you. Most of all I am fed up with the awful reality that it's never going to change. 

They say grief comes in waves, and right now they seem to be crushing me. I pray you know how much I ache to have you with me. 
I love you, fatboy, more than you will ever know...

Never Goodbye

My darling Bosty,

There is one part in the aftermath of your death that I  "skipped" I guess you could say... I did not lay you to rest. You came home with me. Not at all in the way I still so badly wish you would have, but in a pretty little blue urn.

After a month of trying to avoid looking at it each time I passed it sitting on the mantel, mostly because it took weeks for the shock that it was you in there to wear off, I picked you up. And then you started to come everywhere with me. Work, the store, to my friends. Even the Ed Sheeran concert I went to just to hear your song. Some people might find it weird or unsettling but being able to have you with me was the only reason I got through the last year and a half. On the 27th that is going to change.
You will be laid to rest right next to your Great Grandma Jean. Thinking about it instantly brings tears to my eyes and its going to be more difficult than I can put into words to get use to. Whenever I'm having a rough time it has become instinct to instantly reach for you.

 I never thought a time would come that I would make this decision and I pray you know its not because I no longer want you with me. There is not a day that goes by that  I don't dream of what it would be like to not have your absence haunting me...but that's the thing. Your urn holds what remains of your earthly existence, it is a part of you that is sacred to me but it is not the you I ache to have by my side. I want my chubby baby that had just learned how to blow spit bubbles, but it is time for me to face the fact that I don't get to have that you until my time comes.

Please know how much I love and adore you. My work is only a couple minutes away from the cemetery and I promise I will come see you every day on my lunch break.
 I am so sorry.

I love you and it's never goodbye... It's see you later.

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