10/3/23

Wayne,  7 months today.  It's so hard to believe you're gone.  I miss and love you so much 💔

If I could have just one more day with you…I would hardly speak. I would simply listen to your voice and commit every tone of it to memory until it became my favourite melody.  I would look at you. I would study your eyes and your mouth, and I would learn every angle, every pane of your face until I could see you perfectly with my eyes closed.  I would hold your hand in mine. I would trace all the lines on your palm until they became a trail – a map - that I could retrace on my own palm every time I felt lost. I would soak you up and breathe you in until there was not a single thing that I could not recall at a moment’s notice.  But more than anything, if I had one more day with you, I would hold you.  I would hold you so tight, hoping that maybe if I didn’t let you go…You wouldn’t.  Yes, if I had just one more day with you, I would hope… I would hope so hard…that you wouldn’t have to leave again.

*****

'One More Day' is from the book When I Am Gone https://a.co/d/2ozvqjW

My beautiful boy, Wayne 

Music by Slipknot,  his favorite band. 

The night I learned that my son had passed was, and will be, the worst night of my life. I am certain that nothing will ever compare to this pain.  I screamed the word 'no' for hours until my voice was gone. I sat in silent shock.   Somehow I realized when I got myself to bed that this was the first night I would not awaken  wondering where my son,  Wayne was. Exhausted and mentally sick, I fell asleep. The morning brought shock and numbness. I was a zombie, shuffling to the bathroom, and going back to bed.  The disbelief lasts for a very long time. I cried, I wept softly, I yelled at the sky. I continued to say the word 'no.'  I felt like a person made of stone. I was not in control of anything around me.  "What is death," I asked myself over and over. My boy, my only son, had vanished from the planet.  Somehow I was able to make it to his memorial service.  I had to respond to awful questions and difficult comments ("It's God's plan" is one of the worst along with "Everything happens for a reason"). I had to keep my act together in public. I had a frightening new identity—I was a mother who had lost a child.  I not only had to  deal with the brutal loss, I had to redefine myself.   Where did I go wrong?  Why didn't I do more, why, why, why?  As a parent we do the very best we can. Often we think that our best is not good enough, and when we lose a child, we are sure of it.  I will not get over the loss, I will not go through the grief, the grief becomes part of who I am.  Living with the pain slowly becomes the new normal.