It’s been a long time coming …the blog.

Well here I am. I am back and with an urge to write. I’ve been gone since the end of       April ’16! Did I hear a gasp of breath?

It certainly has been a long time …

I’ve changed the name of this blog for a very good reason …

So what has kept this widow from writing. Well obviously grief and coming to terms with grief’s place in this new life of mine. But there’s more to it … In October of ’16  my youngest son passed away, here at home. There was much trauma in his death, unlike the death of his dad.

Just before he passed away, a week before actually, I woke up one sunny morning and felt as though I was ready to begin thinking about what my life was going to be going forward. I was ready to think about living my life. I had begun thinking that there had to be more to life than numb grieving. There had to be a way to grieve and live too.

And then … heroin took my boy. I was slammed back to my knees. I couldn’t breathe again. God help me.//STOP

FMF Post – so I stopped at the 5 minute mark, because the theme of FMF is to freely write for 5 mins. without regard to punctuation, grammar or sentence structure. You should join us there. Follow the link.

** There was only one thing I believed that could possibly be more devastating than losing the spouse you know God meant for you … and that was the loss of the precious child that God gave you charge over.

Breathing hurt so much.

It wasn’t unfounded guilt. You may not understand that. The mother (parents) of an addict often blame themselves. However, I had worked my way out of the prison of enabler. So there was no time to wallow in false guilt.

I couldn’t breathe because I couldn’t bear the the weight of the loss. Shane’s loss was parallel to Don’s death … let me try to explain. The grieving is now two. I am grieving separately for both men. It’s like my son’s death laid atop my husband’s death and now they move forward, simultaneously, like a double deck bridge … one path above the other, neither one more important than the other, yet not equal either. It’s surreal really. And grief’s sister joined us for the journey.

So I stopped moving. If I didn’t have to work, if there was nothing demanding my attention, I didn’t leave my house. Funny … now that I think of it I barely leave my house now. Just church, bible study, groceries and medical or therapy appointments. However, I move some now.

I am always amazed at the fact that my boy has only been gone four months in four days. Funny how the counting works. As a widow you begin counting how long your husband has been gone … now add a child … the counting seems almost to mirror OCD. Thank God it’s not that.

Widow’s begin to count the years, not from their birthday or New Year’s Day, but from the date that they lost their other half. So the start of my year is April 28th each year. I wake on that day and put behind me the old and count the new … today I am just 3 months shy of 2 years old(er). See how that works?

And it just dawned on me, this day, that their is no title for a mother who loses her child; if there is I’ve not heard of it.  There really should be though. We carried those precious ones in our bodies for ten months. He was physically apart of me and it feels as though something has been torn from my body at his loss.

Like losing a lung. The devastation makes it hard to breathe. It’s debilitating really. But I smile and say I’m okay. I’ve become an accomplished liar on the subject of okay. Yet I noticed the other day, while talking on the phone and putting on makeup at the same time, I genuinely laughed at something that escapes me now … and caught my breath a bit when I realized that my laugh, that my smile, even genuine, no longer reached my eyes. This mad me sad. My husband, for a lifetime, said he loved my eyes, that they spoke my emotions. Now, I guess they don’t any longer.

Anyway … I believe I’ve begun rambling. So here I am, I hope I’m really back. I’ll need to get into a comfortable groove as I will be managing both of my blogs, and maybe I can fit my photography blog back on tract too … one step at a time though … thanks for reading. God bless.