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Getting my hands in the dirt.  Can’t wait to pick our first strawberry!

http://themanifeststation.net/2015/01/25/the-hole/

I can relate to Mandy’s story in so many ways.  She has been an excellent source of support for me during my grief journey.  I always enjoy her writing and perspective.

It’s hard to remember this sometimes.  It’s hard not be consumed by it.

Day 4 – Month 4

By the time mid August rolled around, I was getting the call to go back to work.  Parker had just moved the shop to a larger location (across the parking lot) and we were both pretty busy.  I was sad.  I didn’t want to go back and leave my summer of fun with my kiddos.  I was lucky to go back part time so that I was able to enjoy time during the week with the kids.  I knew before Benny was born what it was like to work 40+ hour weeks with Darcy and decided it wasn’t what I wanted.  Parker and I looked over the finances and knew it was going to be tight, but that we would manage.  I didn’t want to miss a minute of Benny growing up.  Looking back, I’m so glad that this was the decision that we made.

Darcy had started to enjoy being an older sister around this time because she could get reactions from Benny.  She was the constant performer and he was her audience.  We started to notice him studying us intently.  You could see the wheels turning in his little mind.  He was still the super laid back easy baby and was an awesome sleeper, but a terrible napper.  Sandy and I called him the 42 minute man.  He would wake up as soon as you started to get into a task or project.  It was no fun!

Came across this today and loved it.  Still miss my mom everyday, even though it’s been almost 19 years.  Love you mom!

A Letter to Motherless Daughters

I want to write, I truly do.  I can’t seem to form the words lately.  To say it’s been hard is an understatement.

I want to feel that great sigh that I get from writing, when I’m able to let it all go.  I miss emptying my brain and letting the words, the emotions come out.

It’s self preservation mode now.  Too much has happened, too much is going on and too much is headed for us.  Dreaded May.  I try to ignore the calendar, but the days are flying by and soon we will be back to May 8th.

This date truly signifies in my mind that I have spent more time without Benny now than with him.  How is that even possible?  Was it truly a year ago that Parker and I drove out to the cemetery by ourselves and placed half of Benny’s ashes in the ground?

Sometimes it feels like a dream, or something awful that happened to something else.  After a year and a half you get used to living with the hole in your soul and the feeling that something is missing.  You almost become numb to it.  We’ve gotten through all of the firsts, holidays, birthdays, anniversaries.  We’ve cried enough tears for several lifetimes.  Yet here we are still, 18 months later.  Stuck.  Scared to move forward and terrified to look back.  Still broken, but in a different way.

Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I tend to be a very rational thinker, almost to a fault sometimes that it can interfere or explain away raw emotion.  My therapist tells me to get out of my head and into my heart.  I approach problems very logically, which is why I am usually able to come at them without emotion.  Puzzles intrigue and excite me, because they are so based in logic, and all of the pieces fit.  It’s fun to me to figure out how to make it all work.

If I were to look at my life logically, it wouldn’t make much sense based on the norm.  I don’t know very many other people that have lost two immediate family members before the age of 34.  Maybe the percentage is larger and I just don’t know, but when I sit here and think of it, I can’t think of anyone else that I am close with.  This is what really bugged me after Bennett died.  I felt that it didn’t make sense (although it rarely does when someone young dies), because I had already suffered the loss of my mother so young.  How could this be happening again to me?  How was it even possible?

It’s rattled my way of thinking.  None of it makes sense.  Why was I back here again?  There’s nothing logical about my situation.  There’s no way to explain why my mom or Bennett had to die.  It’s mind blowing to me, the puzzle pieces don’t seem to fit or are for an entirely different puzzle altogether.  There’s just no explanation.

Because I enjoy figuring things out, I’m always questioning how things work.  When I was little my mom got me a book titled, ‘Why things are’ because I think she was tired of explaining everything and wanted me to try to form some of my own conclusions.  I enjoy researching different perspectives on issues to try to see the gray in the black and white.

Back in December, Parker and I got tickets to see Maureen Hancock, spirit medium.  I’ve always been open to the idea of a medium, yet skeptical at the same time.  There’s truly nothing logical about the whole idea of people that can communicate with the spirits, so it’s a hard concept for me to even begin to wrap my mind around.  She opened the show with a story eerily similar to ours about a family that had an 18 month old boy in Spain that was hit by the car in their driveway.  Maureen was engaging and funny and for about the first half of the show I was thinking, OK, a lot of what she was saying could be guess work or just really good observational skills.  Then she began asking specific people (no assigned seating) about specific names and I thought to myself, wow, pretty impressive.  By the end of the night I didn’t know what to think.  It went against every rational thought I had to be able to acknowledge what was happening in front of us.  She had a group of toddlers and babies come through and she did ask specifically if there was a little boy that was hit by a car.  I did raise my hand and she looked at me, but then became distracted and moved on.  Now, our names were on the tickets, so I figured that if anything was said I would doubt it.

Tonight, Tara and I went to see Maureen again in Worcester.  We bought the tickets in Tara’s name and googled to see who would come up just in case Maureen happened to contact one of her relatives.  Our story was much too public and if my name was anywhere, it was too easy for her to call me out.   I was much more relaxed this time and honestly felt that there were people in the room that probably needed the validation from their loved ones much more than I did.  I had had plenty of signs from Benny and I felt very lucky to have that.  I know that he’s with me, I’ve never doubted that.  It’s more that I doubted that someone could actually talk to him.

The night was a hilarious and emotional ride.  Skeptic or not, people left feeling good about what was going on.  Maureen had really made some crazy connections with names, dates, etc. that were truly unbelievable.  It just made you happy to know that she was putting others at ease.  The show was running late and I had honestly given up, kinda figured oh well.  She brought one mother up on stage who’s son had died when she turned to our side of the room and asked for a mother who’s son had also died.  My hand went up and she sent me to stand alongside two other grieving mothers.  It was intense and of course Maureen got distracted by someone else and didn’t make it back to us for what seemed like forever.  She walked back up to us standing up there and asked what was significant about July.  We all kind of looked at each other, not really acknowledging it when I piped in said that June/July was my due date.  Maureen instantly focused on me and asked if I was having a boy-or-a boy.  I started laughing and validated that in fact I was having a boy.  She guessed July 3rd (I hope not!!).  She said that Benny passed quickly, unexpectedly.  She said she felt that when I was walking up that there was a baby presence.  She asked if there were pictures of him with a mohawk, she felt like he sported a mohawk, to which I laughed again and told her that he in fact had a mohawk from birth to probably around 4 months.  She said that he died quickly and unexpectedly, to which I agreed.  She asked me if he sent signs as hearts to which I said no.  She then moved on to the other two moms and began talking to them.

She asked one of the moms if she wrote, to which she said no, and I said that I did, that I blogged.  She looked at me, stopped for a moment and walked back over.  She asked if there were questions surrounding Benny’s death to which I said yes and no because of course I will always question myself.  She told me to stop worrying about it happening again with the new baby and stop worrying that something will happen.  She said that Benny wanted me to know that he understood it was an accident, that I shouldn’t feel guilty.  She asked off mic if he had been killed by impact to which I nodded.  She said that he knew it wasn’t my fault and I needed to let it go.  She said that Benny was with me always and he was an old soul.  She impressed by how he was able to verbalize so well for a toddler.  I can’t even begin to describe the emotions of these moments and how validating they were for me.  There’s no way that she or anyone will ever know how much I blame myself, even though logically (there’s that word again) I know that there was little I could do.

She started to address us mothers again and asked who had initials EL, who was named Evelyn.  Before I could say anything, a woman in the front row said it was her mom and we had moved on.  I instantly though of Evie, but was still so raw from the aforementioned conversation that I quickly dismissed it.  We all hugged Maureen and took our seats.  When I sat down Tara looked at me and said, ‘EL, Evelyn Louise, the hearts, Benny’s looking out for Evie!’  We’re waiting right now to find out if Evie is having heart surgery in the coming months.  We just made sense of the one thing that Maureen said that didn’t click.

Tara and I got to talk to Maureen briefly after the show and she said to me that I looked familiar and I told her how we were at the show back in December and how Benny had come through briefly, but that was it.  Maureen asked how he passed and before I could finish she burst out with ‘I knew it!’  She said that there was a little boy in her driveway this morning that said he would see her mom tonight.  Maureen thought it was the little boy from Spain, and he had told her no, he was someone else and he wanted to see his mom.

Logic, it’s a funny thing.  It certainly doesn’t fit here at all.  I don’t know what I feel right now besides very peaceful.  There was no way that Maureen could have known any of that information with the amount of details that she had.  There’s no way at all.  Believe it, or not, it was healing for me.  So maybe screw logic and reason.  This is what makes sense:  Nothing at all.

‘It’s too soon…I really just feel ambushed, you know? I thought I had so much more…time.’

The wise words of Lorelai Gilmore. I completely understand.