Let me lead with
this. I know that each of us deals with death and memories in our own way, we
each have our own cycles of up and down, yin and yang; however you care to word
how our feelings manifest themselves in our conscious minds and our daily
lives.
Today at some early hour of the morning I awoke with the
thoughts that I had forgotten what day Joe had died on. Now I know there are
others that can tell you the exact time a loved one died. I, for whatever
reason, can’t seem to keep even the day of Joe’s death in my mind. I have to
look it up almost every time.
Giving in to the random and ever increasing urgency of my
thoughts this morning I had to come downstairs and start writing about those
bits and pieces of memories, or lack thereof, to get my mind to slow down. Of
course I had to look up the day of Joe’s death in our book about him. March 8th,
2013. For some reason I seem to be more in tune with his birthday which was April
11, 1989.
Ask anyone in my family and they will tell you that I’m
terrible about remembering birthdays. The boys learned early on to give me ‘reminders’
of their birthday starting months ahead of time or I would forget. Anytime
there was a need to write their birthdays down on paperwork I would have to ask
them. It wasn’t that I didn’t know the dates; it was that I was a likely to put
the wrong child with the right date more often than not. It’s not that I don’t
think they are important, I know they are, I understand that birthdays are very
important to kids. It’s just that I guess since my own birthday is the day
after Christmas that I have accepted the idea of birthdays being less important
than other days? I don’t know, and that’s not an excuse, it’s me trying to
understand why I seem to have a hard time remembering birthdays when I can
recall phone numbers and addresses from Years ago…
Now what does this have to do with my waking up this morning
and the reason for this rambling order of words? I am not sure, blame it on
early morning thoughts, recovering from the flu, you choose a rationale. For
myself, I think I’ll just call it part of the whole healing process that comes
from losing a child at the prime of his life. That should not happen to any
parent. To the two people still reading after all this, I hope it never happens
to you, and if it has, I’m truly sorry for your loss.
The death of a child brings up doubts of your parenting
skills, bring up all of the memories of what you could have done differently,
what you are sure led to the path your child was on (good or bad, and face it,
we only take credit for the bad most of the time), and what you would give up
to have your child back. It will make you regret all the time you could have
taken them fishing, hunting, bike riding, whatever it was that they and you
wanted to do together but put off because there was not enough time or enough
money, whatever the excuse at the time.
Hum, it just occurred to me that I now use Joe’s death as an
excuse to not do some of those things. Because I put off doing them with Joe I
now put off doing them because he is not here to go with me. Does that make
sense, no it does not, even to me in my current memory filled, rambling, crying
state… but I can see that it has and is happening.
I guess that’s all a part continuing on with life after such
a loss? I don’t know, I’ve never lost a child before but know I felt similar
things after each of my parents died. Why is it that we miss doing things with
them that we didn’t even like doing? Is it just the interaction with them that
we miss or the nearness, or just having them in our lives instead of our
memories?
If anyone is still reading this, I sincerely thank you for
the taking of your precious time, but Please, call your child (children) and go
spend time with them. It does not matter what you do, just enjoy their presence
while you can because you never know when they won’t be there.
