Trepidation

March 3, 2022 is just around the corner, really only a couple of days away – the 20th anniversary of Jason’s sudden departure from this world. I can tell the day is getting close, as I can every year. It’s like I have an internal clock that reminds me, even though I don’t intentionally remind myself. I don’t need a calendar. I feel it in every fiber of my body.

All of a sudden I feel like I’m having a panic attack. I can’t breathe. I want to escape somewhere or to run to some place, but I have nowhere to go. There is no place without the pain of grief. Or a song comes on and tears spring to my eyes. This is generally not uncommon for me, but it happens more so this time of year. My emotions are much closer to the surface – not only grief, but all kinds of emotions. My patience is short, I am more easily frustrated or on edge. Out of the blue, I find myself incredibly sad. Situations that occurred during that time in our lives come to mind more often, even in dreams.

I dreamed the other night that two people – a gal in our homeschool group that I considered to be a friend and her daughter who was a friend of our daughter – had decided that they needed to write letters to me to apologize for the way they had acted when Jason died. They kept trying to give me their letters, but I was still so hurt by their actions (or lack thereof) that I was unwilling to read them. At the same time (in my dream), our landlord – the one who so unceremoniously kicked us out – drove by. His vehicle was full of other homeschool people we knew. With our landlord being the loudest, they were all leaning out the windows and yelling over and over, “I’m sorry!!!! I’m sorry!!! I’m sorry!!!” And then I woke up.

Over the years, I have worked hard on forgiveness, even though with one or two exceptions there have been no apologies, no acknowledgement of anything. At the lowest and most vulnerable place in our lives, we were left so alone for a lot of the time. I have written about some of what we all went through, but I am not at liberty to share all. I have to keep my mind from going to certain places. If I want to (and even sometimes when I don’t really try to), I see things that happened during that time so clearly in my mind and can step back into that time so easily. I don’t want to be a bitter person. I’ve read other bloggers who talk about incredible support. I’m happy to hear about bereaved individuals who have support, but, as you know if you’ve read any of my writings here, that necessarily wasn’t our case. It’s been a long, rough journey. There have been some kindnesses, to be sure, but a lot of loneliness and a lot of residual secondary losses/grief.

We watched a movie the other day called “Free Guy.” It’s a comedy starring Ryan Reynolds, who plays a character in a video game. It took a little while to get into the movie and decide whether we liked it or not, but, in the end, we enjoyed it. As we were watching it, I kept thinking, “Jason would really like this movie.”

Jason liked playing video games, even learning to play his favorite game of chess on an Atari game console when he was little. In college, he took a video game programming class. His professor wrote to me several years ago, saying he still had a copy of the game Jason developed and got it out once in a while to play it. It’s nice when people remember…and tell us about it. They say moms – family members, too – are the keepers of the memories.

I’m looking forward to getting our things out of storage when we move into our new house. We don’t have much left. About half of what we have in storage are photographs and momentos. My goal is to put together a scrapbook in memory of Jason – things that I saved from his time here on earth. Swimming awards, Awana Bible memory awards, things he’s written, pictures he drew, photographs, little everyday things that represent who he was. They are poor substitutes for Jason himself, but they are what I have, along with my memories.

Oh, my precious boy. I can’t believe you have been gone twenty years. I’m so incredibly sad you aren’t here. I miss you so much and I love you without end.

~Becky

© 2022 Rebecca R. Carney

Memories

I’m going to be honest. This is a really rough time of year for me. Tomorrow is the anniversary of Jason’s and Alina’s deaths at the hand of a drunk driver.

 

“Anniversary” is such an out-of-place word to use when talking about the death of a child. “Anniversary” is usually used in conjunction with a happy occasion. If a person says, “It’s my anniversary,” there is an automatic assumption that that person is celebrating the number of years he or she has been married. It’s a happy occasion commemorated with dinner and gifts and congratulations.

 

I know people use the word “anniversary” when talking about other things, too, though. 9/11. War events. Floods. Mud slides. Not every anniversary is celebratory.

 

For the first couple of years, I hated the 3rd of every month, beginning with that first March 3, 2002. It marked a horrifically agonizing, lonely, and excruciatingly painful time – Jason had been gone one month, two months, three months. At the two year mark, I sort of switched to years. Two years, two and a half years, three years. It sort of reminded me of the way I marked the ages of our kids when they were little – giving their ages as so many months and then switching to so many years. Instead of marking the celebration of life, it marked the number of agonizing days we had walked the earth without Jason.

 

Jason has now been gone 17 years. I can’t believe it’s been that long. It seems like forever ago…and yet yesterday. I still tend to rebel against even the thought of it. I remember that day as clear as a bell, every single thing. My heart is still so broken. I know that this whole experience has changed me in so many ways. I miss him so much. Grief lasts as long as love does – forever – and we will forever have a Jason-sized hole in our lives. He had so much of life to live, so much to give. As one friend said, “The world is a darker place without him in it.”

 

I hope you will take time to remember Jason and Alina tomorrow, the lives they lived and the people they were. We, their families, are the “keepers of the memories.” I’m sure each and every bereaved mother or father would say that one of their greatest concerns is that their child will be forgotten as the world moves on without them.

 

If you would like to honor Jason tomorrow, you could play a game of chess (Jason’s favorite game), bake and share some chocolate chip cookies (Jason loved to bake chocolate chip cookies), give someone some flowers (Jason generously gave flowers to those he loved), share an act of kindness (Jason was the most kind and loving person I have ever known), be nice to a stranger (Jason knew no strangers), hug your family and friends tight (Jason gave awesome hugs), listen to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata or Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “A Mad Russian’s Christmas” or many other songs he loved.

 

Julie Lindsey, a homeschool mom, generously gave and prepared a scrapbook for Marie and me. She asked us what we would like in them. I had asked that the scrapbook contain photos I didn’t have and written memories about Jason from those who knew him. It just happened to be around the time when people were writing victim advocate statements to present to the court for the sentencing of the young man who killed Jason and Alina, so most of the efforts went to writing letters to the court. I am very thankful for those who wrote to the court and have copies of all of those letters. It was a lot to ask for at that time.

 

Whatever memories and photographs we have of Jason and Alina are the only ones we will ever have. There are no graduation, wedding, birth of children, holiday celebrations or any other memories or photographs we will ever have of Jason past the date of March 3, 2002. The opportunity for additional memories and photographs died right along with Jason, along with his future. In our minds, Jason will forever be 19 years old.

 

Thank you for taking the time to remember Jason and Alina. We appreciate it.

 

~Becky

© 2019 Rebecca R. Carney

Walking Wounded

Jason’s death was a very, very traumatic event for me. Having people we thought we could count on leave us alone was traumatic. Although not nearly as traumatic as Jason’s death by a long shot, it caused lasting damage. Going through Jason’s room and cleaning it out before I was ready was traumatic. Moving from Seattle to Oklahoma when I didn’t want to and wasn’t ready to move was traumatic. Each successive move hasn’t done much in the grand scheme of things to lessen the trauma and emptiness. Opening my heart in recent years and trusting people who have proven untrustworthy has hurt me horribly and has been traumatic. In some ways, I feel like I’ve given up on trusting people and making meaningful friendships.

Although I have never been to a doctor who diagnosed me with PTSD, I have had (and still have) PTSD-like symptoms. I probably should have talked to a professional counselor or something about it a long time ago. At the time, PTSD was something that was almost entirely associated with Vietnam-era veterans and not bereaved parents. There were not many coping or helpful resources at the time for a parent whose child had died. I tried going to a grief support group, but that was a disaster. We had very little support. I was so used being independent, to doing everything on my own, to coping on my own before Jason died that I just kept on going by sheer willpower the best I knew how. At one point after Jason died, I talked to my general physician about some of what I was feeling, and he put me on anti-depressants for a while.

At the time, my husband and I were trying to decide if we wanted to open a coffee shop or what we wanted to do with our lives since he had been laid off at his job. I knew someone who owned a coffee shop and was looking for help, so I asked her if she would hire me. I wanted to start at the very bottom rung – cleaning toilets, washing floors, taking out trash, closing up the shop – so that I could learn each job, both to determine if we wanted to actually take on this venture and so that I would know what each job entailed should we decide to go ahead with it.  I ended up doing every job and then managing the place before Joe and I decided that was not what we wanted to do.

One day, a lady I distantly knew from homeschooling came in to get coffee. I greeted her and told her my name when I realized she didn’t remember who I was. She seemed shocked and said, “You’re Jason’s mom! But you’re smiling and laughing!!”

Now, there are a couple of things I would like to say about that encounter. First of all, this lady’s demeanor and tone communicated to me that she didn’t seem to feel that, as a parent whose child had died, I should be smiling or laughing. I felt judged for smiling and laughing.

I want to state unequivocally that it’s okay to smile after a child dies. At first, I felt guilty for even smiling, let alone laughing. I would put my hand over my mouth when I smiled. I felt guilty. I guess we almost have to give ourselves permission to enjoy certain things again and to laugh after our child dies. It’s not necessarily an easy thing to do when the death of a child and grief looms so large. It can take a long time to laugh or to smile again.

The second thing about that encounter was that I realized that the anti-depressants weren’t actually helping me. Yes, they took some of the edge off of what I was feeling, but I realized that what they were doing was helping me to avoid the necessary things I needed to do to grieve Jason’s death. For me, it felt like I was artificially suppressing my grief behind a facade. The pills were masking my true feelings and my grief. I may have been depressed to some degree, but I think that I was also deeply grieving.

I understand that sometimes bereaved parents end up clinically depressed when a child dies and that there may be a place for use of medication to treat depression. There is no shame in that. I think sometimes the symptoms of depression and deep grief are mixed up or confused, even by medical professionals. Did my doctor rush to medicate me? I don’t think so. I think he just didn’t understand how long the grief process following the death of a child could be, and he was trying to help me cope.

This same doctor prescribed sleeping pills for me the day Jason died. I had called him because I had such a horrible headache. I guess I was just reaching out for help. I didn’t know what to do, either for the headache or how to grasp the unthinkable fact that Jason died. He prescribed something for the headache, but he also prescribed sleeping pills.

I probably took the sleeping pills way longer than I should have. I took them for a long time just to get some rest at night so I could function during the day. Some days, I specifically had to concentrate on taking just one of the sleeping pills and putting the rest aside. Some days I was in so much pain and I felt so broken and lost, I really wanted to take them all. One day, I just decided I shouldn’t take them any more at all. I wanted to learn to sleep and function without them.

It’s tempting to want to use medication to take the edge off of grief. Grief can be so overwhelming. Living life after the death of a child can be so hard and so overwhelming. Some days it seems impossible to do.

I look back now and I really don’t know how I made it through those times. I got up, I went to school. I did what I had to do – one day, one step, one breath at a time. I did most everything alone. I tried to pretend I was okay, when I really wanted to die. I cried and cried and cried. And then I cried some more. Some days I was so overwhelmed with grief I couldn’t even walk. I had no energy to walk even more one step; I just fell to the floor like a rag doll and cried. I railed at God for not protecting Jason when I had prayed and prayed for our kids and for how betrayed I felt by “His people” deserting us.

It’s almost as if I can step back into that time. I remember it all – the phone call from Alina’s dad telling me Alina and Jason weren’t at their house and that he had driven by a bad accident, the mud I left on the steps as I left the house to go to the accident scene, the sound of the sirens, praying to God, “Oh, God, please NO! Please, God. NO!! I need him!!” Asking the fireman if that was our son in the car in the ditch. Joe telling the policeman, who had confirmed Jason’s death to us, that maybe he was just unconscious and needed to go to the hospital. Going home to call family and friends. Answering the phone in the afternoon when one of Jason’s tutoring students called to ask him a math question and having to tell the boy that Jason had died. Rushing to hold Joe or Jenna as they sobbed uncontrollably, and them doing the same for me. I remember everything about that day like it was yesterday.

I guess I tend to get reflective as those “huge” days approach – Jason’s birthday, holidays, the anniversary of his death. March 3rd, the anniversary of Jason’s death, is approaching rapidly, and memories and feelings feel so much closer to the surface. My mind tends to drift to that time.

I still have a huge emptiness inside of me, a huge loneliness, a huge sadness. I get up, I go to work. I do what I have to do – one day, one step, one breath at a time. I try to do my best, to be the best version of myself I can be and to treat people as I would want to be treated. I still do most everything alone, especially now that our daughter and her husband have moved away. Our older son is across the country and busy with his life, business and family, and our daughter-in-law is not especially helpful in promoting close reltionships. I still try to pretend I am okay, when some days it takes concerted effort and energy to make it through the day. I don’t take sleeping pills any more, but some nights sleep is a welcome refuge. I still hurt so bad at times. I miss my boy every single day. I try to hide it, but I am still walking wounded.

Oh, how I miss my boy.

© 2019 Rebecca R. Carney

 

Restless Winds

Nor’easter winds have been blowing through Western North Carolina, with downed trees and power lines predicted. They started yesterday evening and are not supposed to diminish until sometime tomorrow.

It feels as if they reflect the restlessness in my soul on this day, March 2nd, the day before the anniversary of Jason’s death. I feel like I want to take off and run somewhere far away, as if I could ever get away from the pain and what this time of year represents.

Oh, how this mama’s heart hurts.

Missing you, my precious boy.

~Mom

© 2018 Rebecca R. Carney