Angel Mail #17

Dear Jeremy,

Oh how Mommy misses you! Most days I feel as if time hasn't moved beyond that day in the hospital when I held you in my arms for the last time and we had to part from one another. Saying farewell to you that afternoon was the hardest thing that I have ever done in my life and walking out of the hospital later that day, without you in my arms or the hope of ever doing so, was the second hardest thing that I have ever done. When you were sick we used to joke about the way clocks operated in the hospital. There wasn't any sense of predictability to time there and yet over the many weeks that we spent there, it became normal and we adjusted. I guess it was that we signed up for the long haul. We truly believed that together we were capable of anything that was thrown our way, and that yes, we could be patient for our miracle to happen.

For a long time it seemed like our experience in the hospital with you would end with a miracle just as we had hoped for and that we would spend the rest of our lives filled with the most enormous amount of gratitude. Our story was being written word by word and we thought we knew just how the story would end. We had high hopes and never lost sight of that dream, not even for a moment. We started writing the story in our minds of how when you faced the normal childhood fears and traumas of life, that we would remind you of all that you had already accomplished as a sweet,innocent baby boy, of the strength that you possessed, the many ways that you made an impact on humanity, and what you had, by the grace of God,already triumphed. In my dream we would hold you in our arms and all would be in proper perspective and right with the world again.

Well...you and I both know that your story, our story, did not end quite the way I had imagined. Sometimes I wonder if your story has really ended. I still see such purpose to your life, even today, all these days later after you have left this earth. It comforts me to see your story kept alive in the hearts of so many, some that I have never even met. It's hard to capture and comprehend all that you have done and continue to inspire in present time even though there is a date after the dash by your name. I am so proud of you.

Lately, and I guess rightfully so, I have fallen back into a place where I just can't figure out how to balance it all. There are so many questions in my mind that I simply wear myself searching for answers that simply won't come. How do we continue to walk step by step as a broken family? How do we live each day honoring and keeping your memory alive in a healthy way? How do we grieve in a way that others can see and understand how to love us? How do we continue to live in the shells of the people that we once were, but have long said good bye to as well? There isn't much left of the old me, yet that is all that people who knew me before this story was written, can see. How can I be free to become the new person that I need to become yet also free to change in sync with your father and continue to have a healthy and fulfilling marriage? How can I embrace this metamorphis of this new life without you, a mother living, yet also having parted from one of her children. I still have three of your siblings on this earth that I am responsible for...How can I make them understand when I don't understand myself???

When I allow myself to remember with all my senses the way life once was when you were in my arms, time is ever so confusing. I simply cannot figure out how we got here and why this all happened. I think I have let go of needing to know the answer to why? I know that my heart just won't and can't understand fully that you are gone, it hurts more than a human mother's heart can handle. So I understand that my mind just won't allow it and that there is disconnect there.

In recent months I have been wondering so much about you. You were a baby when we parted ways, but now in today's time you would be three years old. By now, you would have developed a personality of your own. I wonder what you would be like? I wonder if your hair would have fallen out and grown back in blonde just like your siblings? I wonder what your sleep routine would be? What story would have been your favorite to read each and every night? What special CD would we play while we snuggled you before that peaceful slumber? I wonder what your favorite color would be, what your first words would have been, what ALL of your favorite things would have been? I wonder about how we would have spent our special time while your siblings were in school, just like the story that I wrote in my mind. I wonder about the Christmas gifts that would have been bought for you and not in memory of you? I wonder what our family would look like had the story continued the way I had imagined to be all those years ago? I beat myself up daily for not trusting in my Lord enough to see that His way is better than mine. The pain is ever so great and my arms just ache from not being able to feel your presence daily. The questions and wonderings just won't stop and the anger forms from the loss of getting to know you. I cannot seem to find the comfort that I so desparately want and need in YOU. I cannot spend time just immersed in you and all of your favorite favorite things because I never really got the chance to know you...I have only my imagination, and that's only my made up version of your story. I am also grateful knowing that I had more time than others have had, but the time we have, is it ever enough??? If you can hear my heart whisperings, know that there is never enough time. Perhaps I am selfish for wanting more of you. I don't wish for your suffering to have continued but I do long for the good times to have been lengthened somehow...for more of the good stuff to have happened inbetween the dash for you at first, but now, selfishly for me. I want so badly on these hard days just to soak you in the sunshine of you and the good memories and not the battle between the bad memories and my imagined thoughts. I don't want to remember so much pain and suffering that you endured. Your suffering on earth outweighed your good times. It is so painful for us mortal souls to mourn those we love and are forced to let go of so early in life. The songwriter, Sarah Mclachlan, writes
It's late and mornings in no hurry
but sleep won't set me free.
I lie awake and try to recall how your body felt beside me.
The silence gets too hard to handle, and the night is too long.

I imagine you now, FREE and SOARING in heaven and that is all that gets me through this pain that tries to swallow me up in one bite each and every morning.
I am giving my very best effort to not become bitter in this world where pain, suffering, reminders of you, and a life that I once had and had to let go are every where I go...

I am trying to write a new story but I just don't how...

I am trying to trust and rest in the truth that God does know your story and my story for that matter too. He knows how all the parts of my story, the good, the bad, and the ugly, work together for my greater good. They work together hopefully to bring GLORY to Him. I pray each day that I am transparent for all to see that I am real. You were real. My grief is real. You leapt into the arms of Jesus and I in turn, ran faster towards him too. I prayed and continue to pray that with each and every step that I take, beginning right from that one that fateful day in June of 2008, when I took my first step onto the elevator leaving the seventh floor of the hospital that God would lead me and that I would follow Him. You see my feet wanted to dig deeper than ever into the tile and to promise not to EVER leave without you, but my heart had assurance that it wouldn't be for long. I slid down the side of the elevator frame holding on for dear life, but the doors still opened, and I remember that I cried out sounds that still permeate my soul to this day. Somehow, I don't know how, I got on that elevator. I don't remember much about how we even got home or anything else for that matter about that day. Perhaps that is the mind's way of coping with such tragedy. Here I stand here today, some two years later, and I am still praying for strength to take each step. With God by my side, nothing is impossible, because I am somehow still standing. The grace comes at the precise moment when it is needed and not a moment before.

I throw my arms up to the sky and pray for Him to lead the way...to write the story...for me to find the continued strength to just follow the script that my Lord and Savior has written, instead of trying to write my own story.

I pray that tonight I can find some rest now that I am finally able to release these thoughts to you, where they belong.

All my love, always and forever, to you, on Angel's Wings,
Mommy


P.S. I would welcome a peaceful and happy dream of you...