The Portal: Portal-ity Thoughts

As the year 3 mark approaches – I find myself in a quiet and melancholy place. Year one was shock and horror, people, appointments with the DA – almost a blur. I learned how to listen to books to put me to sleep – as I couldn’t read, and I am still struggling to finish one book the old fashioned way, although I’ve started many. Brain fog, disbelief, searching, what-ifs. It was a year of people not knowing what to do with us, of mountains of tears and extreme emotions.  Of anger and profound sadness.  A year where food lost its flavor and coffee became all that tasted good.    I avoided people, places, and questions.  It was a year that I couldn’t talk about him without crying, where I dreaded any kind of get together because of the questions that were asked and because of the reality of the lives we were living.  I said no.  I know it hurt people’s feelings, but how could they possibly understand how a wedding or a graduation party ripped our heart...

An article I wrote for Her View From Home To the Grieving Mother: You Did Everything You Could Dear Mama  – I understand how hard this is for you, as much as one bereaved mother can relate to another. I know your walls are up and your heart is broken.  You’re doing your best to get through each day when you’d really just like to just lay down on their grave or crawl into the casket and die too.  The pain is unbelievable, unbearable, beyond description. This type of loss is a little different. You’ve lost a child, but you’ve lost him or her to a darkness that’s spreading across our land at an alarming rate. It’s consuming our children.  It’s a war.  An epidemic.  A plague. You’re living part of a horrible history in our country and frankly, you cannot believe this is your life.  You’ve asked why a thousand times.  You’ve gone over every detail trying to figure out if you coul...

Aren't they beautiful? When you lose a child, it's virtually impossible to explain how it feels, how lost and broken you are, how upside down your life and your future have become. It is utterly despairing. The only way you can get close to anyone "understanding" is talking to someone who has experienced it.   And so, over time, you form a new group of friends, they are your Grief Friends.  Today I'm going to introduce you to a few of mine.  This blog post started as a piece on the extra complications of grief, and it is turning out to be so much more.  It's my favorite, and I'm so sorry I have to write it. Losing a child is absolutely heartbreaking and indescribable, no matter the cause.  One loss is not more devasting than the next - it's all horrible.   I do, however, think some of the circumstances behind a loss can add an additional layer or layers of incomprehensible devastation that complicates that loss.   I'd like ...

Last Wednesday, we met with some fellow BP's, {Bereaved Parents}, and we were talking about near-death experiences. You've probably all heard or read at least one story about someone who died and was brought back. (i.e. Heaven Is For Real). The stories often include a description of seeing a brilliantly white light and going towards that light. So in this conversation, our friend talked about a NDE (Near Death Experience) that someone he knew had had. When he died, and before he was brought back by the emergency personnel, he went into that bright white light and he said that the feeling of being in that light was one of pure love, peace, and joy...just an unbelievable and indescribable feeling. He said there was nothing like it on Earth. As I heard that and remembered other stories my husband has been sharing while reading books on Heaven, a thought struck me. Euphoria. I've been reading a lot about drug addiction. You get pretty interested after losing a child ...

To be honest, once I publish a blog, I very rarely go back and reread it. I'm sure much of what I say is redundant. But as long as it's in my mind, it's just going to keep coming out in my words.  Today I went back, very briefly, and looked at a few of the posts.  Has God been preparing me all along for this devastating loss of a child? Of course he has.  I posted, in one blog, that in the middle of the night, during one of my wide-awake times, where I would panic and worry about John, God clearly dropped this thought into my mind . . ."Do you trust me?"  I cried like a baby. I did trust Him and I still do.  More than ever. I had been bringing John to the Lord constantly. Asking for his healing from addiction, from the recurring thoughts and memories, from the feelings of guilt and self-loathing. We prayed and we prayed that he would be healed.  And he was. Was it the way we wanted?  No.  It was the way God wanted.  Would our way have ...

I'm not feeling it.  Today has been such an incredibly hard day. I wasn't expecting that.  I was spending time with my gorgeous new grandbaby, and the thought of a new year all of the sudden completely blindsided me. Why?  Because I felt that I was leaving John behind in 2017.  Maybe that makes no sense to anyone else, or maybe it makes perfect sense. I would imagine anyone who lost a child around the holidays can certainly relate. I think a poor night's sleep got the ball rolling, but roll it did.  I couldn't stop crying. Couldn't get myself together.  I had to go home. What a terrible feeling that is.   Ringing in the New Year should be a time of joy and celebration. However, for me, today, the tears won't stop. The year 2017, for us, will always be the year John died.  The year he left us.  The year that changed our lives forever. The year the sadness came to visit and refused to leave.  I don't want to move out of 2017. ...