The hole

People have told me they have no idea what it feels like to lose a child.   The best way to describe how it feels is like this.

Imagine that you have had a hole cut in the middle of your body.  You are still moving, breathing, and functioning in a way that looks normal, you are just doing it with a huge hole in your chest.

Now imagine that you are the only one who sees and feels that hole.  Others know you have the hole but they can't see or feel it.  In their own ways they might try to help you fill the hole. Some of their ideas are good ones that do help you patch the hole. Nothing ever completely fills the hole though.

Imagine after time goes by that a few places in the hole are patched up, but the hole is still there.  At any time a bump or a jar can bring the pain back and you feel like you are back to the beginning. 

After all this time some people understand that the hole will always be there and it won't ever be completely filled.  Those are the ones you feel comfortable with. They are the ones who support you when the hole feels like it's growing. They get you.

There are others who figure that by now if you have learned to function with the hole that it's time for you to be over it. It makes them uncomfortable for you to still be hurting. They have all sorts of ideas of what you can and need to do to get over it.

The hole is there. It will always be there. There are some days when you are aware of the hole but it doesn't dominate your whole life. Other days are different. Those days the hole is the only thing you can think about and you wonder if you will ever be "normal" again.


That's what it feels like.

Little things scream loud

One day, weeks after Andrew died and our lives were expected to be back to "normal" I noticed something startling. Everything that shouted "Andrew lives here!" was gone. His glasses weren't lying wherever he happened to toss them. His steel toed boots were not sitting by the woodstove. His wool socks weren't drying on the window sill. The chair by the window was empty of his bookbag, jacket, hat, and the leather gloves he was so proud of. I wasn't finding his phone and Ipod charging where he found an empty outlet. Doing laundry didn't mean telling him to get his clothes out so that I could start ours. No longer did I have to run the dishwasher at least once a day. A glance at the fridge showed me the last greeting card he ever bought me. It was a picture of a pug wearing a scarf. He had told me that he walked into the store, saw the card first thing, and knew he had to get it for me. As I was taking things off the fridge I found a list of items he needed for a science experiment.  One day I noticed on the computer that it no longer had his economics, spanish, or math lessons on the list of recently used programs. His ring tone was silent on my phone. Grocery shopping didn't mean a cart full of industrial size packages of cheese, crackers, peanut butter, trail mix, and chocolate chips.


All those little things screamed out that he was gone. That he wasn't coming back.