Exhaustion

The business of grief is exhausting. It intrudes on my every thought, every action. If I am lucky enough for it to leave for a few moments, when it returns, it slams into me with such force that I gasp. The fact that grief never fully leaves parents who have lost children is a sobering thought.

But, parents do learn to live with it, each in their own way. No parent's grief is the same. Each parent's process for learning to accept it is different. I have two thoughts regarding this. The first is: I wonder if our children know how much we miss them? I wonder if they know how much a part of us they were, are, always will be? And the second is that I wonder if parents whose children are still here appreciate them enough.

It pains me to see moms and dads become exasperated with their children, because I would give anything to be exasperated with mine. Do these parents understand what a gift each child is? In the store, on the street, at social events time after time I hear and see parents ignore their children when they ask (nicely) for attention. I see parents put their kids down and I see the hurt in the child's eyes. I want to slap these parents and tell them to wake up. To appreciate the wonder of their child.

I know how hard it can be to always be a loving, kind, supportive parent who sets and keeps boundaries. It takes time and energy and emotion and at the end of the day parents rarely have enough. of anything. They are, like me, exhausted. But their exhaustion holds the promise of a new day, of togetherness, of fun and games and laighter and love amid the inevitable tears.

Our exhaustion, the exhaustion of parents who have lost is forever present. This is especially true of parents. like me, who have lost their only child. Our exhaustion is forever, and like grief, we have to learn to live with it. I am in the process of trying to do this. My counselors say this is good, that it is a sign of progress in the grief process. But the work, the process, is slow. It zig zags back and forth and most days brings me back to my first question: do our children know how hard this is for us?

I hope Colby is in a place where he does not know how difficult his loss is for me, for his grandmother, for his friends. It would make him sad and we all want him to be happy, to be free of the difficulties he endured here on Earth. He went through a lot and deserves some peace. I want to believe that, I try to believe it, and someday I may actually get there.