Mid February 2013

Grief

My grieving Liam is so different than any other person that I have lost in my lifetime. It's so different that I am not sure, nor are a lot of my friends and family sure, how exactly you deal, cope, and process this type of loss.

When I said good-bye to grandparents, classmates, my great great aunt, and friends family members etc. You are celebrating a life lived. You may grieve a life cut short or a person gone to soon, but you have memories that you will carry with you forever.

I remember after my great grandma Elsie's funeral, we sat around with my dad's family and everyone went around the room and shared a story about grandma. We laughed and cried and those are the things that help you grieve. You can look back fondly on memories, you remember things they taught you, showed you, and shared with you throughout your life. Those are the things you carry with you. Those are the parts of them that live on forever in the hearts and memories of the loved ones they leave behind.

I don't have any memories of Liam alive. I never got to know his personality or what kind of kiddo he would be. If he would have been more involved with sports or more musically inclined. If he would have been really outgoing and active, or more reserved and intellectual. Would he have pushed the boundaries, or been more of a ruler follower? I will never know. I don't have any of the "remember when Liam...." or "He always use to say...." In that sense I feel like I have nothing to hold onto. Even the 9 months I was blessed to have him in my life, watching him move on the monitor, or feel him kick and poke inside my stomach. Hearing his heartbeat, it seems like a flash in the pan in the grand scheme of life. Just a short time of moments and memories is not much to hold onto until eternity.

I sat in his nursery for months envisioning and thinking about "what will it be like when we actually bring him, a human being home and put him in this bed, when I rock him to sleep at night, I feel him and change him..." Now I will never know.

Instead of the "what WILL it be like" I am faced with the "what WOULD it HAVE been like" Those aren't memories for me, they were merely dreams, and now they allude me. It's that feeling of trying desperately to run in a dream while you're being chased but feel like your moving through thick glue and can't get anywhere although your running as fast as you can. Or wen your right in the middle of the season changing game and it's all tied up, and then your TV goes out and you have no idea what's happening. Or when you're falling in dream and in a panic try to yell for help until you're jolted awake to realize it was only a dream. It's that question that never gets answered, that dream that never becomes a reality, the pain that never goes away, the game you never see the end of, your still running in slow motion.

So how do you grieve the death of a dream?

How do you mourn someone you never got to really meat?

How do you keep someone's memory alive who you never got to know?

How do you bring up and talk about your dead child when it makes everyone so uncomfortable?

How do you articulate how you feel when you know now one really understands?

I am not sad because of the memories and times spent with Liam that I will never have again. I am sad because of moments, memories, and times I never got to experience at all.