Memories are good and needed, in fact. We can no longer make new ones & so we cling to the old ones. However, TJ is not there. He is HERE.
A Needed Reminder
Tag: childhood cancer
Music Soothes the Savage Beast
I didn’t know what today would bring. It’s relatively early in the day, in fact, and I still don’t know the path ahead of me. I woke feeling heavy, weighed down physically. It was hard to get out of bed. Puppy whining in her crate, “Let me out. I need to pee.” It was an hour or more later than…
A Foreigner in This Land
Have you ever been somewhere and felt so out of place that you felt like a foreigner? You had no idea where to go or how you’d get there if you did know. Have you ever been somewhere and felt like that even though you had been there dozens upon dozens of times? It is sort of like the opposite of deja vu. When you have deja vu there is a distinct feeling that you have seen something, been somewhere, met someone before. Even if you didn’t know WHY you felt that way there was a certainty that you knew “X”. Going back to the opposite, there’s a certainty that you know NOTHING. That is how I feel today. In terms of grieving that is.
Hell Week
The memories flood into my thought-space and there’s not much I can do about it. Part of me wants to sit in bed all day and stare at photos from TJ’S last week. And part of me says “get your ass outta bed!” I don’t know which will win. Right now it’s the “stay in bed” voice. I feel paralyzed and even when I look around at all that waits to be tended to, I just don’t give a fuck. Maybe one more hour in bed? Two? I don’t know. I don’t know how to get through today.
Remembering
There’s nothing simple about showing up for someone’s pain
River of Renewal
I am in several grief community Facebook groups. One is more general, one for parents, one for parents whose children died from cancer, and the most specific being for parents whose children died from brain cancer. I was reading posts in the childhood cancer group this morning and a mom was grieving the loss of her child and talking about…
A Birthday Gift from the Other Side
I arrived in Dallas after finishing leg one of a trip from Philadelphia to Seattle. As I walked through the terminal I heard a violinist playing sweet music. He was center stage, entertaining weary and excited travelers alike. A glint color caught my eye from overhead and as I looked up I saw a huge circle of intertwined wires, lights,…
Hauntings
I saw this Instagram post today and it was meaningful to me on multiple levels. It made me think of all the times I think of TJ, how he’s in my day and in my life but not in a physical form, a ghost if you will. Honestly, I don’t want to not think of TJ. I want an overwhelming…
Changes are afoot
Good changes. Needed changes. But any change can be a challenge. The new, the uncharted, the unexpected. We just don’t know what’s around the corner. And THAT’S the real challenge.
There is a book I read not too long after TJ died called The Light Between Us. I suppose it wasn’t the first time I had heard of the idea of asking someone from the other side to send a specific sign, but it was the first time in the context of the bereaved mother and it resonated with me.…