The Road I Am Taking

I wish I could adequately explain how hard this week is for me and has been since we said goodbye to Cain.  It truly is a struggle to put one foot in front of the other, to keep moving, to keep breathing.  In moments that seem to span endlessly, the grief can feel just as suffocating as it did those first minutes, hours, days and weeks after Cain died.   It is hard not to let myself get lost in the past and avoid the present, a present without him. Yet, I must. My living children need me. My husband needs me. My friends need me. And people who are experiencing a similar loss need me. But most importantly, I need to do it for myself, to forge on, to rise out of the quicksand of grief and live.  It doesn’t mean the grief isn’t there or that it will ever go away. Trust me. It won’t. It will bend and alter over time through all of its phases, but leave, it never will. And honestly, I don’t want it to because in that grief abides unending love for my son.

 

I wish so many things this week. What I wouldn’t give to be planning a birthday party, Cain’s 2^nd party, just as I did for Cooper.  To see the excitement in his eyes, to see him struggle to blow out those two candles. To simply hold him as I do Coop and Case, and whisper, “Do you know how much I love you?”  Even though Cain isn’t here with me, I do constantly remind him how much I love him and miss him.  I tell him every day. And though he may not hear me, just speaking those words into existence gives me comfort on some level because I do love him just as much as I love my living children. And even though death separates us temporarily, it doesn’t stop me from mothering him, and it never shall.

 

I miss my son terribly. My arms ache as much as they did two years ago when he departed for heaven and we remained. Since that time I’ve been through so many phases of grief. I have certainly weathered the seasons of anger, sometimes repeatedly. I have walked through those places of isolation, feeling so alone, wondering if I would ever be truly happy again. I still feel as though acceptance is light years away, but I am slowly learning to live in a world without one of my children. It's a path that changes every day. There is no map saying, "Go this way," or "Exit." Instead, there are only numerous untraveled, roads, some so thickly overgrown with hurt and anger and emotional pain that at times, it just seems easier to just stay where I am. But slowly, each day, I make it a little farther down the path. I don't really know if the path ever ends. Instead, it may just take me to a new place in this grief journey, and what awaits at its end, I've yet to discover.

 

I do know this. No matter where the journey takes me, at its beginning will always be my son, my beautiful, precious little boy. And I'll keep traveling this road because I want others to continue to remember him, to remember that long-time residency in this world isn't a requirement for impacting others. Cain is proof of that fact.

 

And I know one path that will always lead me to Cain, and that is faith in God. Because of His promises, I know at the end of the my life my path will come full circle, and I will hold my son again.

 

"For I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me." - 2 Samuel 12:23