That is where I am today. I keep trying to put my finger on it, but it refuses to be defined. So it just is, and that is okay.
I finished my book The Worst Loss today. I learned a couple of things:
1) I'm doing alright.
2) I'm doing right by myself and my family.
3) This grief process doesn't have an end date (that's not the best news ever).
Today I started with the "How Children Grieve" section. One of the things it mentioned was that children are more physical and may need outlets like bike riding or something like that. Which I think may be part of Omi's decision to do this 1/2 marathon. She already danced. That is nothing new. But her desire to do this 1/2 marathon and push herself; that is new. Yes, some of it may be her desire to spend special time with mom, but honestly, I think it is more than that. I think doing this marathon and pushing herself and being physical is helping her with her grief. I know it helps me. I am definitely a more physical type person and I need that kind of activity to work through things. I always have. Even as a kid, I would get angry and go running or skating. Roller skating saved my life. I NEED and CRAVE that physical activity. And if I didn't have a brain injury issue, I would totally do something along the lines of boxing or MMA right now :).
It talked about Barriers to Grieving and when you get stuck in the pain. It discussed symptoms of this. I do not think anyone in this house is "stuck" and not grieving. The only one who may be having an issue is Tracy, but the is only because he has to work a full time job which does not give him much time to grieve. I don't work, and I do this stuff to help me. Omi was already in therapy. Suzy is working through her stuff. Nate is not working and able to spend time working through stuff. Granted, we are all grieving at our own pace, but we are all moving forward I think.. even Tracy. It's just harder for him I think. But I guess reading that part was a bit reassuring.
In there book there were sections that spoke directly to how a child might have died.... illness, sudden death, suicides, that kind of thing. I skipped over the ones that did not pertain to me and went straight to sudden deaths and it talked about the feeling of helplessness that people feel in these kinds of deaths. It reminded me how angry I would get at people in my family who kept trying to help me when in actuality it just made me even more angry. I realize now they were just trying to feed their own sense of helplessness and trying to feel better. I knew it even then. But this book described it even more. I was about to say that I had gotten over it but as I typed this, I realized I still had anger issues. *laugh* Grrr... I'm not perfect. I'll get over it one day. I know their hearts were in the right places; it was just more than I could deal with (and I guess its still more than I can deal with when I am forced to think about it). It was also during that time that we were in the "search for facts" phase. Suzy and I needed answers. We wanted to know what happened. We wanted all of the answers. I am totally person that needs all the facts. I remember when we were finally able to get the autopsy report, the medical examiner would say "You really don't want these details." At the time I didn't. But Tracy and Suzy wanted them. We never did get that report. But knowing the cause of death, knowing the details, seeing Nick's motorcycle and even seeing Blair's car, it all helped us put pieces together to make sense of the chaos that had turned our lives upside down.
Towards the end of the book, there are chapters on how to get through this time in our lives after losing a child. There is a paragraph that sums up what Tracy (and I to an extent) feel like now:
"When you cannot function at the level you usually expect of yourself, it hurts. It is easy to fall into scolding yourself, feeling inadequate. The fact is that for now you ARE inadequate. You may need to remind yourself that if you'd suffered a physical injury as severe as your emotional wound, you'd be in the ICU. You wouldn't expect a person in intensive care to be fully herself or particularly available to the rest of her family. You expect an ICU patient to accept her limitations, not push herself, give her body a chance to heal. Your injury is severe and pervasive. You will need to lower your expectations of yourself. You must give your heart time and opportunity to heal."
Ya... about that. I feel like I can't remember things. I feel like I can't handle things the way I used to be able to handle things. I feel like I let people down. I feel like I let myself down. I feel like a failure sometimes. It's hard. But this passage is right. I have been in an emotional trauma that if it had been physical would have landed me in ICU. I have to give myself time to heal and be patient with myself. Tracy does too. So does the rest of the family.
There were many other things mentioned in this book, like taking time each day to remember Nick. I think I do that with this blog. But maybe that would help the rest of the family. Taking time to remember Nick. Make an appointment with yourself, allows our emotions to say, "Oh ya, I have a special time for this...." and allows our brain to think about other things when it knows it will have time for Nick later. It also mentioned taking time to find pleasure in life... doing things that we loved to do before Nick died. I think we do that to some extent. We went snowboarding. We go to burlesque shows. We find things that make us smile. Then towards the end of the book, it echoed my fear that I had mentioned earlier. When we have things like a court case pending, a settlement getting finished or like Nick's graduation.. all of these things keep us focused on Nick. In a way it keeps Nick alive and keeps it fresh. But once those things are settled and finished, its like the floor falls out from beneath us again..... It's nice to know that what I was feeling is REAL and to be expected. It's nice to know that intuitively I knew what was going on in our heads and hearts.
Over all, this was a great book to validate what is going on in my life and how we are dealing with things in this house. Like I said before, the idea that this grief stuff can go on for years is rather frightening. It's not that I will continue to grieve every single day, but that every year that passes something will happen and I will always be reminded that Nick is no longer here. Whether its on the anniversary of his death, or his birthday, or when I hear about a motorcycle down. Something will hit me....and it will always be like that. It won't always hurt as bad. It won't always take me down for the count, but for the rest of my life, I will remember that a big part of my heart is gone and is never coming back. As the years go by, this book says, my unconscious will realize this is final and that is why it will hurt. Ugh. Thanks for the warning. It also said that friends will think, "Well, gosh, that happened so long ago, you should be over it now." And they won't understand. And the book is right. Do you know how I know? Because I thought the same thing of a woman who lost her son. I didn't know her son, and I only met her after her son had passed. But I knew it had been years, and yet she was still crying like it was fresh. I could not understand. I do now.
The book kept mentioning a specific support group called Compassionate Friends. I looked it up here in Boise, and it meets the 2nd Thursday of the month at the Meridian St. Luke's. I think I will go and see how it fits into my life. I am not going to lie. When I saw the list of names of the "board", it about took my breath away. Yes, I have a handful of friends on my facebook that have lost children, but for whatever reason, seeing this list of people too my breath away. They ALL lost children? How can so many people have lost children? I don't know. It just struck me as heart breaking and weird all at the same time.
Today, after I finished my book, all I wanted to do was feel a connection with Nick. It dawned on me that we do not live in a house he has ever lived in. He never actually got to see this house. He never went to the church I belong to. I can't just go hang out in the houses where he spent a great deal of his life. And I just miss him. I miss his energy. And for whatever reason, I had a huge urge to go to Crone's Cupboard today (a local store and the place that Nick spent most of his teenage years going to classes at). I drove all the way there today just to find they were not open today. *laugh* I don't really know what I was going to look for there, but I just wanted to go there and see if I could feel him there. It's bizarre. I know that all I would do was cry. But I had this distinct memory of him in that store hanging out with his friends from the youth group there. They were laughing and goofing off. It's a great memory, and I just wanted to go visit it for a bit.
I miss Nick today. I miss his loud, deep voice. I miss his beard. I miss his long hair. I miss his arguing. I miss him running around barefooted everywhere he went. I miss his holey jeans. I just miss my kid. And that is okay.
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