... for a little Cub's Mama-

I know so many people who would disagree with my advice completely here but as someone who wears your shoes (or some like them) everyday... I say don't face it if you can't - don't force yourself to take steps you aren't ready for, the time flys by so quickly after the first year and life, it takes over and you don't get these opportunities to breakdown or ignore it, you have to 'keep on keepin' on'.

If you're anything like me, the things you feel right now will fade one day and even though they hurt like hell- you will miss them, or at least I do. The first year after David died I felt so close to him, like I could feel him around me and I let time and the world force grief and mourning on me when I just wanted to co-exist with my loss. I still feel him and I still think of him a hundred times a day but it feels different.

Just do what you need to do and if that's to avoid it and pretend it's not there or to set up camp under the dining room table to avoid the world, then do it. You will never have this opportunity again. If you think the world around us isn't tolerant of loss in the first year, wait until you're 3 years out, that's when a fort under the table gets you a real label...

Painfully, time keeps moving and us being frozen in a world of motion has always felt to me, like being caught in a tornado... just take your time and in your time you'll find a way through the storm.

Be well Mama, you deserve some peace.

Bleeding Hearts

I took these a couple weeks ago in my Mom's garden. I always wondered as a child why my mother was so fond of this plant, it seemed so sad, the name and the little dangling flowers... not so much since David died though. Death is sad, plants are not.

It fascinates me that they grow several to a branch, leaning on one another. It makes me think of each little flower as a parent's broken heart and there is some comfort to knowing that we are all tied together in this.

My baby had, didn't have...?, would have had...?, another birthday

The day came and went. It was quiet for the most part, uneventful as to be expected. I said something at the cemetery about every year it seems like I need less from his birthday, less talking, less consoling, less tears, just less of everything. I couldn't even use the word dead on his first would-be birthday... I said 'passed' and 'gone', now I must sound bitter, I'm not but I probably sound it, because I don't even think before I speak anymore... I always feel bad when I talk about him being dead because people seem so surprised by how I talk about it. It's not that it's any easier to talk about or any less painful to say, I just don't feel the need to make others feel better about David dying, that's their path to walk not mine. I'm doing the best I can and sadly, sometimes I need to hear that he is dead because I've tried pretending that it hasn't happened and I've tried ignoring it and I've tried to use nice words to make it hurt less but all that does is hurt more that I can't even accept it.

I remember when he first died I used to walk around sighing and say "I don't know" over and over again like a lunatic. It was almost like a nervous habit... I would just say it to break the silence I think. "I don't know" and everyone around me would be like "what, what don't you know?" to which I would respond "I don't know". I remember his entire first birthday was spent crying and saying that I didn't know. I realized on his would be 4th birthday that I still 'don't know' what I didn't know. The difference is that I've stopped saying it.

I think that is all time does for mourning mothers, it's all still there, the pain and the unknown and the panic... it all still exists and controls our every move but at some point we just get so used to it that it feels normal and we stop questioning it.

I'm rambling.

Would-be birthdays are so unimaginably impossible.