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: grief
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…
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.
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…
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…
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.…
Checking out for the Night
“….I was mentally checked out for the day. I had worked my butt off the day before and even that morning….”
Hills and Valleys
Today I celebrate the first anniversary of This Mama’s Heart. When I started last January, I wasn’t quite sure if anyone outside my family and close friends would be interested in my thoughts- the good, bad, and the ugly. But as it turns out, other people are interested and I am truly blessed to know I have touched hearts. I…
Home
I thought I knew what I was going to write about. Three years ago today, TJ and I were being airlifted from Washington, D.C. to Philadelphia, from one Children’s Hospital to another. I thought I was going to tell you about all the hope I felt that day to be able to get back to our home hospital and meet…
Music, Lights, and Nutcrackers, Oh My
Driving to the home school co-op this morning I felt the holiday sadness creeping in. Like a wiggle worm- one part “get off me” and one part “don’t go away”- the emotions moved through my ears to my head, to my heart, and finally finding their escape route as tears that drenched my cheeks. It’s never easy knowing how to…