Taking the training wheels off

Posted by in letters to the boys

Many, many of you have thanked me for being open and honest with my grief and grieving.  This post, for some reason, seems more personal.  More revealing.  But I am going to post it anyway and hope you won’t think less of me.  But if you do… that’s okay.  This is me.

Ayrie- why are you leaving me?  It’s only been six weeks and I’m not ready.  In the past I have felt you there buoying me.  Not letting me fall too far.  Counter-balancing my negative thoughts.  Reminding me of the strong amazing person that I am.

But you aren’t in me anymore.  Or you are but not in that very present, active way.  It’s like you are watching from afar.  Seeing how much I’ve learned.   I’m sorry to disappoint but today I don’t feel like I’ve learned anything.  I feel like a big, fat, ugly, repulsive, piece of shit.  I feel embarrassed to leave the house.  I wonder why people as beautiful as Ayrie and Shiya would be trusted to me.  I wonder why people are  helping us so much.  I want to move away and hide.  A different part of the country.  A cabin in the woods.  No more disappointing people.  No more being disappointed.  No more failure and rejection.  No more taking and not being able to give in return.  Just living out life until its over.

Does everyone get to join the light, like Ayrie did?  I don’t know… some people I’ve read suggest that it’s a choice you make.  I am not worthy of the light.  What ever I was supposed to learn in this life, I’m failing.  I remember, in an academic way, that I am supposed to learn to believe in myself, in my potential for greatness.  In living in the moment with love and good intentions.  But I am so disgusted by myself that those seem  impossibly far away.  Instead I have one dead child and one who would probably be better off without me.  I don’t mean that I am going to kill myself or hurt myself, I really don’t.  I would never do that to Shiya and I would never dis-honor Ayrie’s memory and gifts in that way.  I just mean that I feel so dark and dirty and repulsive inside.

I was writing this sitting at the childcare center waiting for a teacher conference with Shiya’s teacher.  But with ten minutes left the kids came out and tears spranf to my eyes.  I don’t want to cry around the kids because they are so joyful.  But watching these kids hurts.  I feel sick to my stomach.  I have to leave.

Okay.  I couldn’t stop.  Watching them I had the sudden urge to vomit.  So I fled the room and made it to the bathroom just in time.  when I was done I found a quiet spot to wait out the 10 minutes until Shiya’s conference.  This kids did’t even know I was there, not to mention how I was feeling.  Kids are amazing in that they can truly live in the moment.

As I sit here and wait I still feel physically sick.  Really.  Ill.  How can I have a dead child?  Where did all that life go?  That beautiful body?

I think winter is affecting me.  All of the sudden it’s cold and gray.  It’s ugly and dreary.  Leaves have fallen.  Flowers are gone.  Daylight savings happened and now its dark before Shiya even leaves school.   I am not a winter person.

This morning I told Shiya that I felt so lucky to have him.  And that felt wrong so I told him that I was so lucky to be his mom.  In the first statement it’s more like I own him or that he’s my possession.  In the second statement it instead it’s more like he’s a gift to me.