We Finally moved...

This is your catch up as lots of changes have taken place since my last post in 2016.  Seems like "change" has been the theme song of all of this.  About the only thing that hasn't changed is my frame of mind.


We have moved from what was our home of 23 years to our supposed to be a down-sized, home to retire in.  So my version of down-sizing is going from three bedrooms and two and a half baths to four bedrooms and three full baths and I know that doesn't sound like down-sizing.  But actually the square footage is about the same. It is not any bigger and actually seems smaller and it is all under one roof.  We went from 26 acres to less than 1 acre --so it really is.

Actually that took place a full year ago now.  We left the area and moved 102 miles from our previous home.  We left my daughter and son in law and all of her boys which does not seem like the smartest thing I've ever done but in a way I did it "for" her.  I was getting so clingy until I was sucking up her life.  She wanted to stop wallowing in all of this. She got a new puppy to fill a hole in her heart and that gave her something to focus on besides tragedy.  She somehow convinced herself to just let go of wondering what happened and go with what she had.  She was tired of crying and being depressed and she wanted to get back to life.  And she's young and I absolutely wanted her to do that.  I would want nothing less for her.  That of course is what I want for me too.  It just has not come.  But I felt like if  we continued to stay close to her - I would keep her pulled into my drama and prevent her from moving forward.

And...we needed a fresh start.  We needed to be somewhere where everything was new and different so that it was clearly apparent that nothing was the same so that I might stop expecting it to be the same.  So I could stop seeing Brian everywhere and waiting for Paxton to come through the door.

I needed a change in my church although that was scary and I really didn't think we would ever have a chance of becoming comfortable anywhere else at this age and with this hanging over us.  But I needed fresh spiritual blood in my veins.  I had been disappointed in the lack of spiritual support during my faith crisis and that was not helping my attitude any.

We moved what seemed the equivalent of "halfway" between my two existing children.  Although my son actually lives in NC and my daughter in NW Georgia and we are in NE Georgia it constituted "halfway" because we are twenty miles from each of his two daughters.  He will regularly come to visit them.  And he said he would never come to our old house again after the funeral and going on three years later - he never has.  So we tried to make it easier on him to come visit and actually easier than it would have been had we actually been halfway.  However, to be honest he doesn't come here either.  He is another casualty of all of this.

We are now seventeen miles from my best friend Kathie as opposed to 85 miles.  For the first time in over 30 years we can see each other more than twice a year.  She came to our house in the summer, we went to hers for New Year's Eve.

In our old home I really had no close friends.  I had good neighbors and I had church family but not real intimate friends with history and longtime loyalty.  And Kathie has kept me out of the closet. She has refused to let me go and live in the darkness.  She helped me decorate the new home or I would still be living out of boxes and not caring one bit.  She helped me purge some of the mountains of stuff we ended up moving with us  She made me put up a Christmas Tree --at least a little one. She drags me shopping and the four of us have a standing almost weekly dinner date.  She has helped me transition to the area by recommending doctors, restaurants, shopping etc. and has made this a lot easier than I ever expected it to be.

Here, we are 35 miles closer to my sister as well and though that isn't close it is half as far as we were.  She is doing okay - not good but it is a day by day thing and still at times I need to take her to the clinic and this allows us to see much more of each other.  We can meet for dinner halfway which helps too.

And as I said, I'm now 20 miles from my two granddaughters that I seldom got to see and now I'm getting to catch up and be a part of their lives.

I am still fifty miles from work but I'm no worse off and maybe a little better in that it is all interstate and my commute though bad, is not as long time-wise.  And after being here a year - I wonder why this wasn't the obvious choice for us all along.  Only because of leaving my daughter and my church did we not consider it for so long.

So there actually was a method to the madness.  And hopefully someday that property will sell and we will be out from under all that upkeep. 

Probably the biggest advantage to moving here though was that we are anonymous.  No one turns all the way around in their chair and stares when we walk in a restaurant or the post office or the bank.  No one pins us down and asks us uncomfortable questions.  No one refuses to work for us.  Still not sure how we will build an intimate close relationship with the members of the new church we've chosen and keep such a huge secret but for now anonymous feels pretty good; almost normal. 

It just sort of seems like a huge deception and we haven't yet worked out all the kinks of whether we will or whether we won't ever tell them.  I tend toward wanting to "rip the Band-Aid off" and just go ahead and see if they are who they say they are but Donald does not.  He is happy there and doesn't want to rock the boat and take the chance.  So until we are on the same page and prepared to take whatever outcome we get - we are just enjoying the small semblance of normalcy in their not-knowing.  I realize it is a trust issue but I don't think I could take it if they turned their backs and started judging us or looked at us differently or started shying away from us.  So for now - we've chosen to maintain the anonymity and deal with the guilt of the deception...in church no less!

The Never-Ending Sadness

I have absolutely got to get better than this.  It is going on three years now and the depression is alive and well.  There has yet to be a day that I don't think of them most of the day.  The pain is not as sharp and it doesn't feel like I am drowning to the point of being unable to breathe but I cannot seem to care about anything still. 


I wrote this short poem in 1986.


Still I cry.
Someday I will stop.
Unable to feel,
Joy or pain.


And that about sums it up.  I am terrified that that will be my truth and my future.  When I do stop crying and no longer feel pain it will be because all "feeling" has ceased. 


There are days now when I don't cry.  Whole chunks of time that I go without crying but it still doesn't feel like living either.  There is no enjoyment of the things I used to love.  Nothing to look forward to.  Nothing that makes my heart glad.


We always planned to travel once we retired and did some before we retired.  I have no desire to travel.  When we do go somewhere all I can think of is getting back home.  I don't enjoy anything about being on vacation anymore.  I try.  And I go because Donald wants to and it isn't fair to him but I really never want to go and just want to get back home.  I planned a week of vacation back in May.  I decided to take Donald to Charlotte to the AllStar Race and the NASCAR hall of fame and Hendrick Motor Sports Complex.  Figured I may as well do a vacation for him since I wasn't going to enjoy it anyway.  I had planned afterward to maybe go to Asheville and to the Gem mines as I always loved rocks and thought I might enjoy that.  We went to the race, to NASCAR museum and to Hendrick MS and turned right around and came straight home.  Three days.  Basically a long weekend and we were home by Monday evening and the rest of the week was spent in the house doing nothing.  A week's vacation wasted.


I had a moment of enthusiasm a couple of months ago when I decided we'd create a memory garden for the three of them.  We had no graves to go to.  We had no stone with a record of their lives.  We never saw them and we were not even able to attend the memorial service for Kara or Paxton and it had about drove me crazy.  So a memory garden sounded like a good workable solution to the feeling of incompleteness.  Then --it got complicated.  I lost interest when it wouldn't get finished.  I do think it helped Donald to do it though.  He seemed to be going at it like a madman working tirelessly laying stone retainer walls, hauling in fill dirt, top soil and sand.  He was really dedicated to it - for a while.  But like I said it got complicated.  More complicated than it needed to be and now it sits.  He had surgery.  It rained for a month.  Flooded the garden and washed the sand under the fence and there is no sunshine for the flowers.  And I'm not sure it will ever get finished.  So instead of making me feel better, it now makes me feel worse. It feels like I quit on them and it looks sad and neglected now.


"This" is why I stopped writing for almost a year.  Well that and the fact that I've lost interest in writing too.  I don't even recognize the person that I am today.  I'm 30 pounds heavier and cannot seem to get up off the sofa.  I feel like I'm committing suicide the slow way - eating myself into a heart attack.


It just sounds like a pity-party and all I do is whine.  I'm sick of it myself and I know everyone else surely is.  I am going backwards and I don't know how to stop it.  I don't think of dying every minute like I did - but I still think about it a lot and since that had gotten better and now it is back - that is disturbing.


I have no one to talk to about all of this.  And I finally decided that perhaps the blog was keeping me alive.  Maybe it was my friend, my solace, my confidant.  Maybe it was helping me more than I ever realized.  Maybe I can just sit down and write something.  Not something edifying.  Not something inspirational.  Not something helpful to anyone.  Just something.

Four Weeks and One Year...

Saturday was one year ago since I started the blog with my post Four Weeks.  It has been one heck of a ride since that first post.

When it was mentioned to me that maybe I should start a blog, I had no idea why, since I had never even read a blog.  I had no idea what I would do with it, what I would write or how it could possibly help.  But as I’ve said before I latched onto anything and everything that anyone suggested. I: read everything I could get my hands on, attended Grief Share, called a counselor, contacted Stephen Ministries, tried to pray, took whatever time off from work that was appropriate, went back to work to get back engaged in life, clung to family, wrote in my journal (which I have always done.) Read the bible, listened to preaching and teaching and Christian music.  Anything and everything that I even heard of that might help me survive this with my sanity intact –I tried.  So when starting a blog was suggested and writing had always been my natural outlet and my way to cope –I started a blog.  And while I can’t say that any one thing was most instrumental in my survival the blog has certainly played a huge part.  And yes, there are still days when it is still up in the air whether I will make it all the way through it, but I have managed to survive it one day at a time, one step at a time, one “post” at a time for thirteen months today -- a feat I never believed possible thirteen months ago.

Here I have found peace, faith, friends, comfort and release.  I have been able to write out my feelings, my love, my hurts, my memories, my devastation, my disappointments, my insecurities, my life-lessons and my grief.

I have been able through this to express some of the isolating loneliness of this horror and find solace in the friends and family that I have here because I can say the things on my heart here that I would likely never say in person.   It has helped me to be able to recognize blessings and miracles and gifts as I have written through my day to day survival.  I have found friends that have been my support and I hope and pray that it has been some comfort for others; that perhaps something I may have said or acknowledged may have helped someone else along this grief road or if nothing else – let someone know they were not alone and give them hope in the fact that if I can survive “this” freight train – they too can survive theirs. 

Through writing here I have been able to lay things out in black and white, sort through them and organize them in my mind helping me at times to see things I would have otherwise missed.  I have rediscovered my love for music and found a new love in the hope and healing words of Praise and Worship because of a reader here that had actually been through a similar experience. I have been able to post sweet memories of my baby boy, funny pictures and honor all that he was as I relived my short time with him.  I have been able to honor the memory of my daughter-in-law and express some of what she meant to me and our entire family and I have been free to acknowledge my love for my son, relive the joy that he was to us and recount some of the reasons that I can never believe this horrific conclusion about what happened and I have been free to express my disappointment, my anger and resulting insecurities with the way the Sheriff’s Department handled the "investigation". 

A year ago there was no way I could have imagined all this blog would mean to me.  It has been all of the above and much more.  Thank you for being there with me as I struggled to survive this.

Many, many days, this has been my only safe place to fall.

Shipwrecked

I’ve been thinking a lot about my biggest fear and greatest loss through this.  And with so very much loss it seems I have a lot to choose from.  And as hard as it is to believe, the clear winner is the loss of my faith as I knew it. 

Some days are better than others but I have to admit I still struggle and any one of you that choose to judge – I challenge you to walk a mile in my shoes – if you dare - before you say it could never happen to you.

I feel terrible for it – certainly.  And I worry that I won’t be forgiven for the doubts and anger that have plagued my days for nine months now.  The anger has let up some – thank goodness but now I live with the constant guilt left in its wake.  

What has taken the place of that anger is a cavern of emptiness.   I have days when I feel better about things and there are days when I look at the way I used to “know” God and realize that there is no way that could have ever worked.  But what is worrying me is that I seem to have had far more clarity on that months ago.  There are days when I see clearly that God had to destroy the self-centered, worldly image that I had of Him in order for me to know His real, true nature – but I also know that we’re only half-way there.  He destroyed the image that I had – that’s for sure.  But I haven’t found the replacement image as yet to know who He really is because He seems very far away right now.  And I’m a little afraid of rebuilding that “house of cards” as C.S. Lewis put it. Like if you tried handing me another baby and saying “Here fall in love with this child and let’s see how this one works out.” 

Not going to happen.

And I’m not sure I can build another belief system out of the shreds of faith I have left either.   I hope and pray that I can and that though I am not there yet – in time I will be –but at this point, I honestly do not know.

As I look back over the months and I reread here what I’ve written along this horrific journey, it appears that in many ways I seem to be going backwards.

 

I was in counseling.  I was reading a lot of grief books, self-help books and inspirational books.  I was watching videos.  I was going to Grief Share.  I had my sister to talk to a lot and had daily responsibilities that kept me out of the closet and after nine months you’d assume I’d be on my way up out of the depths of despair. 

When the numbness wore off and I was so devastated and so broken and so fragile I was running 90 MPH trying to “do” everything I could think of, to keep me from wanting to die every minute of every day.  

I lived with the daily fear that I would succumb and wreak more havoc on my already devastated family.  I wrote on the blog the first entry that I was not sure I could live through this but this was my attempt to at least postpone “not living through it” as long as possible.  Even I, thought if I could just postpone it for some reasonable amount of time that I would be kind of past the danger period.  Not over it -- I knew better than that -- but dealing with it enough that I was comfortable that I would not do anything stupid.

So I bombarded myself with every avenue that I thought may help.  Everything anyone suggested – I tried.   I devoured everything anyone sent me – books, articles, videos, inspirational quotes cards and letters.  I was doing what I do -- being obsessive about it and hitting it with everything I had in my arsenal. 

Still I went to bed at night hoping and praying that I would not wake up.  I didn’t want to be the actual cause myself of any more pain to my family but if it happened ---well I’d have been perfectly happy.   And when I woke up every morning I was pissed off.  But human nature is such that I still continued to fight.  If I wasn’t going to die then I was going to have to find whatever it took to give me the will to live. 

So I prepared for the battle.  I have never known this kind of profound grief and despair and I had to literally learn how to survive it.  So I found out what to do and what not to do in order to heal.  I learned grief was messy and had no defined timeline.  I learned that you lean into the grief and you do not hide it or run from it or attempt to cover it up if you want to heal and not get stuck.  I learned you should feel and express your emotions.  I learned the language and what to expect: “melt downs” and “ambushes” and “triggers”.  I learned we all grieve differently and on different timelines.  I learned it was work and that you needed to talk about your loss and acknowledge your loved ones. 

I attacked it like I would any other project.  It was here.  I couldn’t avoid it.  So I would research it, find out all I could about it and just deal with it head on.  I was fighting; fighting to survive it though I didn’t even want to – I was doing it for the rest of my family and my few closest friends.  As it turns out two thirds of the family and friends I was so concerned about “sparing” any additional pain, have chosen to walk away and cut all ties so there was very little need to worry.  I'm kind of thinking they would have been just fine.

My sister has gone to her own home now.  I am back at work fulltime.  I am out of the rental house and back home where all of their memories were (and still are) and where every weekend I had breakdown after breakdown as the triggers here slapped me in the face the minute I arrived and stayed long after I left.

I can no longer attend Grief Share since it is not close and my spare time is now spent in a nearly four hour daily commute. 

All the books began to run together and all the information I'd read was pretty well internalized so I felt I was ready to let go of all of the external efforts and obsessing and put what I learned to practice so I could finally begin to heal. 

I knew the Kubler-Ross  five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, sadness & acceptance)  I was aware of the danger signs of depression and I was prepared so as not to fall off a cliff there.  I knew to steer clear of temporary “feel better” fixes like alcohol, drugs, shopping, over-eating or having an affair.  I knew not to make major changes in my life or make major decisions while still in this state. 

The plan was to fix it in whatever way was in my control – I guess I was going to “Type A” it into submission.  And apparently while I thought I was facing it head-on – it was just another way to throw the focus on my "obsession with dealing with it" and avoid the obvious.  And now here I am nine months down the road...wondering if I am any better or actually worse --again?

In looking back over the previous nine months of posts – which is also what I was supposed to do in order to “realize growth” – I'm not sure that is what I’m seeing...There are no longer sweet baby stories, or amusing anecdotes of our time together, no more inspirational epiphanies about life or love or God; no more accounts of miracles in the face of this tragedy. 

My mind keeps drifting to thoughts of a shipwreck.  Someone stranded in a lifeboat on the high seas.  The first few days they fight with blind determination to make it through.  That is of course when they still have plenty of food and water.  They pray.  They cling to hope.  They look diligently for the rescue boats to come.  But then as days stretch into weeks, the food runs out, the fresh water runs low and they see hope draining out of the bottom of the near-empty water source.  Then come the rains and hope is rekindled.  They have a measure of relief.  They praise God for the gift of the fresh Heaven sent water.  Suddenly the gentle welcome rain takes an evil turn as swirling, menacing darks clouds appear; lightening begins popping all around; thunder roars, gale-force winds whip and the waves become huge and raging.    The little boat is tossed and battered as is the struggling soul on board.  Finally, the storm subsides and hope springs forth - a little slower this time and not quite as high.  The sun comes out - a welcome sight then it begins to beat down relentlessly until the suffering soul on board starts to hallucinate; slipping in and out of consciousness. "Surviving" has lost its momentum.  Then one day without any foresight or fanfare - he just slips quietly under the water…

Brian's 42nd birthday

Well, I expected it to be hard and it certainly did not disappoint.  I decided I might not have enough time to get it all in --so I started crying yesterday.  And kept it up periodically all day today as well.  It was harder than Christmas, Thanksgiving and even Paxton's birthday although that was really tough too. 


I baked his favorite German Chocolate cake because the lady leading the meetings at GriefShare suggested we actually acknowledge or even celebrate his birthday.  It would make us feel closer and like he had not been forgotten.  So I had planned to have lunch with my daughter and son in law, talk about Brian and tell some funny stories about him or share our favorite memories, have his favorite cake and feel like we had honored his memory and acknowledged that he was still a part of our family and always would be.  I baked the cake...


I cried all through the cake baking wishing I had baked it last year but knowing I did not.  We went to lunch - I cried all the way there and all the way back and couldn't talk about him at all because I knew I would make a scene in the restaurant.  Then they showed me his daughter's post on Facebook and that made me cry. 


She posted a sweet note to him that sadly I knew was something that he had waited his entire life to hear. She told him how she wished he could see that baby and that she now finally realized how much he had loved the three of them.  She said she finally understood how deep a parent's love really was.  She said she loved him and she wished that she had told him.  He, like most parents, would have given all he had to hear her acknowledge that.


I had wanted to write something special for him today much like she did but for some reason - I can't.  All I can do is cry. 


Here we are almost seven months later.  We still have no idea what actually happened.  And though I have honestly "tried" to buy the story we have --I still can't.  You just had to know him like we all knew him.  He had a quick temper that is true but he has never been able to hurt anything in his entire life.  He had a temper but he could never hold a grudge.  He blew it off and was completely over it and remorseful in 10 minutes.  He was just loud.  But truly good-hearted.  He loved deeply and was loyal to a fault. 


It was his birthday six years ago and he had run back into Kara that week after six years had passed since they had first met - "Mom, I know you are going to think I am crazy but I let her get away one time, and I do not intend to do that again."


They had met when he was thirty years old and she was just 18 and right out of school.  He went out with her a few times and even brought her to church once then he abruptly broke it off.  He said she was just too young.  Even though he did not look but about nineteen himself - he had lived a lot more of life than she had and he was afraid.  He was afraid she would regret not living some of her life before she settled down.  He was afraid she would do like his first wife and wait until she was 25 and then decide she wanted to live all the life she had missed.  He had reservations about what his kids would think; what other people would think; what her parents would think; how she would relate to his kids considering her age. He could not handle it and so he broke it off and apparently always regretted it. 


He said he had looked for her everywhere he went.  He only dated two girls in between and he could never commit.  He said he had not been consciously waiting on her but he did admit he could never completely get her out of his mind.  When they ran into each other after six years he asked her to marry him two weeks later!  She was grown now and he no longer had the same worries and reservations about her and he was determined never to lose her again. That was the week of his 36th birthday.  They married the following July.  He felt like all that had been taken from him when his first wife left was being restored to him.  And he was happier than I had ever seen him.  He had never thought he could ever trust again and used to always say he would never marry again.  But not only did he know immediately that he wanted to marry Kara - trust was never an issue. 


She loved him and she made sure he knew it.  He never doubted her love for him even after all he'd been through. She admired him for his talents.  She trusted his judgment in everything and she always liked the fact that he was the head of the family and took care of the finances.  Unlike most girls her age - independence was something she cared very little about.  His taking care of those things was actually a measure of security to her and I believe with all my heart that she loved her life with him.  He also admired her.  He admired who she was as a person - her honesty and dedication to their marriage and their home.  He trusted her completely and always knew she was a good-hearted person.  He admired her as a mother and in five years of marriage he never once complained about anything to do with her.  He never to my knowledge ever said an unkind word about her to anyone.  He always bragged on her cooking and what a good housekeeper she was and thought she was absolutely the best mom ever to their son.  He would have given her anything she wanted that was in his power to provide.


There is just still no way that I can know who he was in his heart and believe he was in any way capable of this.  I know I'm his mother but it isn't just me - no one that ever knew him can believe it.  There was nothing he would not do for anyone. 


He was my heart and I don't know how I will ever live without him but still to me the hardest part of this is the legacy this leaves for him that I will never believe he deserves.


Brian, I love you with all my heart and I miss you more than I even thought possible and no matter what - I knew who you were and nothing will ever make me believe this. 


Forty -two years ago I became Brian's mom - and nothing will ever change that.

Coincidence? Really?

I turned on the news today and almost passed out as I listened to an almost word for word repeat of the horrific news story that forever changed our lives four months ago.

Police were called to the home of a local family when members of the household did not show up for school and work.

Four members of a family were found shot to death as they slept. All shot with the homeowners gun. According to the news report there was no sign of a struggle. Same county.


In a city of over 4,000,000 people the exact same scenario happens a few miles from my son's home? Coincidence? Seriously? And again ---deemed murder/suicide?

This time the male homeowner was one of their own. A long time veteran of the County Sheriff's Dept. In this case the stepson was identified as the shooter. 


Naturally not the Deputy.


My heart goes out to that family. I know the heartache they live with tonight. And many nights yet to come. At least because of who he is they will no doubt get a more thorough investigation.


My guess is that "why" will suddenly be important. I'm betting a toxicology report is actually ordered this time and maybe even a ballistics test as well and I'm almost sure the GBI will actually get called in to head this investigation.


Hopefully, this family will get some of the closure they need to go on.  Although it won't bring them back, at least they won't be left with the same holes in the story that haunt us night after night.


It's a crying shame that all the county's citizens (and tax payers) lives are not treated with the same level of importance. How can anyone look at that precious baby's face and deem his life not as important as someone else's?


So it may have been easy for them to see how my son, the only grown male supposedly awake in his household, could pick up his wife's gun and shoot a sleeping woman and child.  But how does a young boy take an experienced law enforcement officer's service revolver and over-power an entire household without any resistance? 

Words I could never have imagined saying…

Four months out, and there are some out of state friends and extended family members that still do not know about the loss of my children.  I thought I was finally going to be able to make those calls but when I try – I find that there are no words… no way to relay this news.  What do I say?  How do I tell this?  How do I explain that what the police say happened – could in no way have happened and yet still I do not know what, in fact, did happen?  How do you tell this to anyone?  The few people that I have told were so freaked out by it until they were speechless, they either bolted or hurried off the phone and I have never heard from them again. 

Talk about a truly humbling experience.

I recall meeting a pitiful couple the first night we attended the 13-week grief seminar.  Their young adult son had been murdered by a man in his apartment complex.  They were having a very difficult time with the grief, anger, confusion and disbelief that someone could just walk up for no apparent reason and kill their son.  They wanted answers.  They were angry at the system and the way things had been handled although apparently, thank God, they had caught the killer.  They were baffled at how someone could be so callous and cruel as to kill another human being that was just doing what young people do and "having a good time". 


They still yet had to go through the rigors of a long, drawn out, emotional trial as they hoped at least for some sort of justice for their son.  They were of course, in deep grief over the loss of their son as well.  The sadness and empathy in the room was palpable.  Everyone could relate to that terrible feeling of loss but while everyone else in the group was reeling in shock; appalled at the thought of him being a victim of “murder” – I sat there and realized what I was feeling was more like sadness mixed with --envy?

Can you imagine?

I felt awful!  I realize that was not a natural response to the situation and yet I promise you at that moment I wish I could have stood up and said that someone had murdered my children.  What a comfort it would have been to say,  ”This terrible person did this awful thing and I am angry, hurt and confused at the cruelty of this situation.  I want justice!”  At that moment I thought how much I would love to have been able to say those words??? How awful! But how true.

I could openly grieve my son.  I could have poured my heart out over the loss of my child to any extended family and all of my old friends and co-workers and everyone would have understood the great loss.  I could have talked about how much I loved and missed my child to anyone in any circles without the devastation of having them turn away in what appeared to be --disgust. I could have had my loss validated instead of feeling like I had no right to love and miss my son.  I could have taken comfort from friends and family instead of feeling like I needed to instead launch into defense mode as I tried in vain to explain who he really was in his heart and how much he loved his wife and child.  “But, you don’t know him. There is no way.  He adored them.  But you don't understand, he was absolutely not capable of...  He couldn’t have...  He would never…” and I see "the look" and I choke and turn away leaving my words dangling in mid-air. 

This is why this blog has been so vital to my survival because here I can pour out my heart.  I can openly acknowledge my devastating loss.  My grief can spill all over these pages mingled with my tears.  I can talk freely about whom I knew he was in his heart; how he was such a funny, goofy child, a fun-loving young adult, a loyal and responsible husband, how much he loved his children and what a good dad he was.  I can talk about him like he was my son - a victim and not my son, the cause of another family's loss.  I can rightfully grieve this horrific loss.  I can love him in spite of what the Sheriff’s office said because I am, after all --Still Brian's Mom.

Things grief has taught me...

I know it is difficult to know what to say especially to someone in our situation and although we have had so many friends, church members, neighbors and co-workers that have been so thoughtful and so kind – we have also been shocked and surprised that most of the time, the care and concern we have received has been from people we either barely knew or did not know at all and then equally surprised at so little care and concern from some of the people we would have thought of as those friends closest to us or those that have been a part of our lives for years.

I have had sweet and thoughtful cards, calls, texts and emails, gifts, meals and donations to the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society  -- from such surprise sources as: my retired mail carrier, a girl in a resource department on my job, my new boss, the real estate agent we purchased a house through several years ago, my ex-daughter in law (divorced over 20 years ago), a neighbor from 25 years ago, our receptionist at work, an ex-co-worker that left the company almost two years ago, a young man new to our company that I only worked with about two months, the lady that replaced me when I changed jobs, the receptionist from another company located on the same floor as ours, my daughter’s Sabbath School class (not the same church or denomination as me), my sister’s best friend, my sister’s pastors mother. 

But sometimes those that you thought were your closest friends seem kind of freaked out and just don’t know what to say or how to act and so they simply avoid you.  This is a time when your emotions are so raw and you are so overly sensitive that friendships can be forged through the simplest act of care and concern or forever broken for the lack of it.

You really need not say or do a lot – sometimes just showing up is more than enough.  A hug and a simple “I’m so sorry” is perfect.  I could never have imagined what a simple card in the mail could do to lift your spirits. There have literally been days when a simple card in the mail actually made the difference between life and death at that moment.  You really may never realize what such a small gesture can mean to someone that is hurting.  A quick phone call with “Hey I was thinking about you – is there anything you need?”  They will likely say “No”, but ask anyway.

Also please know that we need to talk about it.  We need to talk about or hear our loved one’s names.  Please don’t come and try and distract us with talk about football or current events to avoid bringing our loved one up in conversation because you think it may make us sad – we are sad – there is no avoiding that.  We have no desire to forget them or pretend it did not happen.  We need to talk about it and it helps if you listen.  And yes, we may cry.  Bring chocolate and cry with us or just get us a tissue and tough it out. 

The only difference between living through a profound loss and never having lived through one – is time.  If you live long enough – you will experience great loss at some point.  One thing I have learned is how important it is to be caring, compassionate and supportive to those experiencing great loss because it does matter.

I 'm sure I have been guilty of the same, though I hope not often and one thing for sure that has come from this – is that I will never again be that person that doesn’t know what to say so I say nothing.