Remembering Dominic: Words in the Crowd

“It has been said time heals all wounds. I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind protecting it’s sanity covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it’s never gone.” – Rose Kennedy

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I have decided that August is my hell... I wonder how long it will be like this.. how long I will struggle with the profound knowledge that this is the month that my son left my arms forever. There are those who will likely understand, the people who have experienced such a profound loss that it spreads along time without end. Mine doesn't seem to stop, an endless list of reasons and memories that continue to loop through my mind.

I don't know at what point I suddenly realized it was August 1st, but from the second that the calendar rolled over, I started counting down the days. The days to when my own personal nightmare started. The last year was too much for words, but in the next 19 days there will be such a wound that will reopen, I don't know how I will ever close it back up. How do you heal? I'm told, repeatedly, that time will take care of it. But I think sometimes that isn't true... that I will feel constant that my soul has been laid bare for all to see.

You see, I woke up several nights ago dreaming of him. His smell was there, the feel of him against my lips as I sang to him quietly in my arms. You would think that there would be some kind of comfort to be found in that. But, it is also my curse that I remember things so clearly. When I woke he wasn't there... I couldn't find him to hold again. I sat for a long time in the middle of the night, the house quiet and his ashes in my lap. Wishing I could hold him just one last time, but I know that one last time will never be enough.

The problem lays more in the fact that my cracked mask is only seen to me. That my pain is often invisible to others. Grief as deep as mine is hidden behind layers of emotion, one laid out on top of the other like coats of paint hiding the imperfections in the wall. I remind myself to be positive, I lay the pictures down in front of myself from each day, reminding myself that I have so much to live for. And it isn't that I don't know that, that I don't know I am loved, that I don't know that I have people who would happily guide me through the next days. It's that I know that eventually... sooner or later... those people will leave too.

To say I have trust issues is barely touching the surface of how deep it all goes. But as I say that, I look over photos again, thinking about the love I had and still have in me. As much as I miss my son, I am in no hurry to meet him and my maker. I mourn deeper, for all that I won't see in the future -- I mourn for the could have beens. He would be old enough to start talking to me, babble or what not, but I can picture his smiling face on a toddling child who just wants to explore the world. I can imagine him making noises at me still, the way he touched my face as if he was touching my soul. Would he look even more like Kaiden than he already did? Would he still show those hints of my facial features under his chubby cheeks? Would he have his dad's spirit or mine? Would he grow tall, strong, and with purpose?

I try so hard to push the thoughts ahead... I tell myself that after the 29th, I'll feel a little better. That I will have survived the first year without him. I wonder if I lie to myself though, as if I am making up stories to try to keep myself from falling to pieces. And I have fallen to pieces, I've yet to pick them all up. How can you even be able to do that when the edges still cut your hands when you try?

People ask me what they can do to help, I have no answer for it. Do you talk more? Do you talk less? How do you ask for help when you don't know what the problem is or where you will go? It hurts. Living hurts. How do you ask for help with that?

I'm seeing a new therapist, his insight is welcomed as a different perspective than I've ever had before. It's hard to see everything through the eyes of another, I don't envy his job. His job is to give me the tools -- the gloves, persay -- to pick up the pieces again. I almost pity him as he sits across from me, I watch him work through having to tell a mother how to get over losing her son. I doubt he knows the things that go through my head as he talks to me. He has books all over his office about grief, about developing healthy minds and habits, he has a picture up that has a quote about strength. He says he admires mine, meanwhile I look at the features of his face and wonder what it would look like if he went through what I have. Would the lines and sleepless nights touch him like I feel like they have me?

It is this way with a great deal of my appointments -- me half listening as people tell me things I've either heard or read a hundred times. How to you explain to people they now sound like the adults from the Peanuts? That while I hear them, I am inspecting them instead, finding the indicators of stress and mark them for what they are. The tired eyes, the laugh lines, the proof that they have endured too. If they have, then certainly I can too, right?

It's what it is all is about. Finding a way to make it through? I want to do more than ride the waves and come out at the other side. I want to learn how to live again, how to enjoy life again. I'm a work in project, finding my happy again, even though I don't know where that path will lead me.

So tonight, I go to bed knowing I am one day closer to tomorrow... closer to the day that I know my soul will ache at as it inches closer. And with that ache I will remember... If I weren't here... I'd never feel the ache... and that ache means he existed... that his life mattered, even if it was only to me.

To my baby... to my Dominic... I miss you. And I'll stay here missing you, because I love you and your brothers enough to stay.

Until next time...

“It has been said time heals all wounds. I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind protecting it’s sanity covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it’s never gone.”

– Rose Kennedy