Settling In

We have been in our new house nearly a month now. We are settling in and it is beginning to feel like home. It’s a process that takes longer than one would think.

It’s been super glitchy, much more so than I would have anticipated – last minute rush by the builder to get things finished before we could move in, things needing fixed, delivery issues, etc. Some things have been done, but even now, nearly four weeks in, we still are waiting for several fixes by the builder. Other things we will take care of ourselves or will just have to wait until it can be done.

The window coverings are in but the installer can’t be here for several weeks. Our coffee table won’t be here for a while as it’s on backorder. We have to find a set for the patio and small table for the front porch but haven’t found anything we like or that is affordable. Most of the “big stuff” has been delivered and other things we will purchase as we go along or can afford.

Our progress also has been hampered by some health issues. Joe works part time at a local veterans home and recently was moved arbitrarily to a different job, one that requires working outside in the heat and humidity. Although it was not a move he wanted, he took the change in stride. Joe is a man of integrity and will perform a job to the best of his ability no matter what’s required of him. As a result of this move, he came home overheated nearly every day since then and ended up extremely dehydrated.

He came home one day last week after work, laid down to rest and woke up extremely confused and disoriented. About two hours later, he started to shake all over. When the shakes didn’t dissipate, I took him to the emergency room. They checked him in, listened to his symptoms and health history, told us to take a seat in the waiting area and then we waited. And waited. And waited. About 2 1/2 hours into our wait, we were told that there was an eight hour waiting list and we were way down the line. Because Joe had finally stopped shaking and was so exhausted he could hardly sit up, we went home so he could get some rest (before he was seen by a doctor).

I called first thing in the morning and got Joe in to see his GP doctor. The doctor was surprised the emergency room personnel didn’t see him right away with his symptoms, age and heart history. Joe was still somewhat dehydrated (despite our efforts to hydrate) and they ran some tests. Thankfully, his kidneys weren’t damaged, but he did end up with a secondary infection from being so dehydrated. He has been too exhausted to do too much since then. A trip to the cardiologist to check on his heart was also a priority. Everything looks okay, but he is scheduled for an echocardiogram next week just to make sure and to see why his blood pressure and weight are running low. His energy seems to be improving some day by day, so that’s good.

As a result house-wise, though, most of the responsibility for getting things done and and working on forward progress has fallen on me. My #1 priority has been making sure Joe is okay, though. Everything else is taking a back seat.

The boxes in the garage are slowly – very, very slowly – getting reduced at least a little as things get put away or go to Goodwill. The garbage and recycling guys now wave at us as they pick up the trash and cut-up boxes from our efforts to settle in. We finally got internet yesterday – and it is rip-roaring fast (as a person who works remotely at home, that’s very important). The desk for my office should be here today. We have a few more larger items to buy when we can afford them and then we can work on filling in gaps and putting up pictures, etc. It’s taking much longer to get done that I would anticipated, but we’re getting there. Our neighbors told us they have been in their house for seven months and are still working on unpacking boxes. I guess we are not alone in our efforts. But we are doing the best we can…and we’re getting there.

Our goal is to create a place where we can be at home, a place of healing and hope, a place where we can make guests feel welcome. Hopefully, that is something that we can eventually achieve.

~Becky

© 2022 Rebecca R. Carney

Home

We recently closed on a house that is being built. It’s been a long time coming. It’s a small house – 1100 square feet, two bedrooms, two bathrooms plus an office and a sunroom. It will have a walking track, lawn maintenance and is about a half a mile from a cute, small town. It’s in a community of nice homes with people who seem friendly. I’m hoping we can make some friends there.

We had looked around this area for a place to buy off and on since we moved here nearly ten years ago. We considered moving to an area where we could be closer to our daughter or son and grandkids. It’s difficult to have people you love and want to be around on two separate coasts. With health issues (Joe’s heart attack and me being in the hospital twice last year with UTI’s that went septic) and COVID, we haven’t seen Eric and his family in more than three years. We haven’t seen our grandkids in more than three years. It’s a difficult thing for me not to be able to see my family on a regular basis. Although our daughter no longer lives near us, we are able to see her more often as she lives only four hours away. We still miss having her close. Housing costs in both areas were prohibitive for us, especially since I would have to give up my job to move either place and we wouldn’t qualify without my income. There’s no easy solution. This opportunity came up and we decided to make the commitment to once again try to make a house feel like our home.

After Jason died, we had a hard time figuring out where we belonged. No place felt like home any more. Everything was changed; nothing felt comfortable and easy. The house that was busy with activity and people before Jason died was now so lonely and quiet that the silence literally hurt my ears. It hurt my heart even more. Every corner, every place was a reminder of Jason’s absence. Every time we left the house and had to drive by the accident site, which was often, the reminder of that horrible day and his death stared us in the face. Some of the people we knew were uncomfortable with such deep grief and avoided us like we had something contagious. We became the people that other people pointed to from across the room, the ones whose son had died, the ones people ducked down the grocery aisles to avoid. Most people had no idea what to say to us. It was difficult, to say the least.

Joe and I struggled horribly. I felt like I was crushed to nothingness, an empty box with both ends cut out. Increased noise sensitivity and a flight-or-fight reflex whenever I felt trapped or cornered in any way were just some of the things I dealt with on a daily basis. I couldn’t sit still for very long. I was antsy and restless. My doctor prescribed sleeping pills so I could get some sleep. We didn’t want to stay around the empty house on weekends, but we didn’t have much of anything to do. It was hard to find the enthusiasm and interest to do anything. I kept going to school and Joe kept working.  It’s as if we thought that if we just kept moving, maybe it wouldn’t hurt as much.

We eventually sold our house in Snohomish and most everything we had and moved to Oklahoma. We purchased a home and bought some furniture. I got a job. Instead of feeling at home, I found that I pulled inside myself and went into a survival mode there and, although I worked full time, felt like I mostly just existed to make it through the day so I could go to bed. While it had been difficult to live in a place that screamed of Jason’s absence, it was even harder to live in a place where he had never been, around people who never knew him. My sense of connectedness was gone and I felt adrift.

After deciding that Oklahoma was not the place for us, we once again sold our house, along with all of the furnishings we had purchased a few years earlier. The things we wanted to keep, such as photos and momentos, went into storage until we knew where we were going to land. Since then, we have lived in furnished rentals in Florida and North Carolina, trying to figure out where we fit. We still have the few belongings we have left in a storage unit. I currently work two jobs – one for 30 hours a week and one on a contract basis. Joe, never one to sit still, has found odd jobs to keep him busy in retirement and in pocket cash. We really don’t know where else to go. You really can’t outrun grief. No decision is a decision in itself and it’s time we have a home of our own.

I am, at the same time, both excited and filled with trepidation at this purchase and such a large commitment at this stage in our lives. It hasn’t helped that rising inflation costs and supply chain issues are affecting building materials and things we need to purchase for our home.  We need to purchase most EVERYTHING for our home – from pots and pans to appliances to a bed to sleep in – and everything in between. I have been working gradually at purchasing kitchen items – with the help of my sister who had a virtual “housewarming Pampered Chef party” for us a while back and family who bought items for the house at Christmas. We are working on the big-ticket items, but need to have the house to be done enough to be able to have delivery there, all while trying to work through rising prices and backorders. It’s a bit overwhelming at times.

I’m hoping we finally can feel “at home” in this house. As I said earlier, I haven’t really felt “at home” any place since before Jason died. Carrie Underwood sings a song called “Temporary Home,” one with which I feel an affinity. I know that we are all travelers just passing through this life on earth. This is our temporary home. I believe that one day we will see Jason again in our final destination, our home in the heavens. I look forward to that day. Until then, we will do our best to be people of whom he would be proud and try to find joy and contentment where we can in our new home while we are here on earth.

The anniversary of Jason’s death is one month from today. It has always been a difficult time of year for me. Grief ebbs and flows, but it never ends. As of this year, he will have been gone longer than he lived. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around that. We will find some way to honor Jason in our new home. He is always in our thoughts and in our hearts. We take him with us wherever we go.

~Becky

© 2022 Rebecca R. Carney

(edited slightly for clarity)

Temporary Home

As I sat having lunch in the park with my husband, Carrie Underwood’s song “Temporary Home” came on the radio. It always makes me cry when I hear it. It’s such a beautiful song, one more of hope than loss. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to it, I urge you go do so now.

I can relate with this song on so many levels. I feel like my husband and I have been living a “temporary life” for so many years that it’s difficult to remember what it’s like to be settled in a home of our own. On top of that, since Jason died, I have been so incredibly aware of how temporary things here on earth are – friendships, life, happiness, health, etc. – and that this world definitely is not my ultimate home. I long to see my precious boy again, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will see him again one day.

This world is just my temporary home.

~Becky

© 2020 Rebecca R. Carney

A Place to Call Home

On Inauguration Day 1993, Seattle was hit with one of the strongest windstorms ever to hit the area. Winds reached Category 1 hurricane level at one point, and a tree fell on the house we were renting. I previously wrote about this storm in my post, “Of Falling Trees and Such.”

Following that dramatic event, we immediately had to move out of the house we were renting (since it was too damaged to continue living in), put our things in storage (I didn’t realize this would be the theme of my life!), and stayed with friends while we looked for a house to buy. Interest rates had gone down to a place where we felt we could afford to purchase a house. While Joe went to work, the kids and I looked at house after house with a realtor. In particular, I remember a house with red shag carpeting on the walls in the basement, among many others. We made an offer on a house, only to have it fall through on inspection. Other offers were topped by higher offers on several occasions. It was a tough market to find something close in so Joe wouldn’t have to drive too far to work.

At one time during this journey, I entered a poem in a contest sponsored by local Christian radio station about “what makes a house a home,” winning awesome mini blinds for our entire home. Since we didn’t actually have a home at the time, the company granted our request to hold onto our win until we actually had a home. It was a tremendous encouragement at the time to have that hope to hold onto, that we would actually have a home one day.

As spring began to turn into summer, we took a break from house hunting. We drove to Southern California so we could take the kids to Disneyland and then went to Colorado to see Joe’s folks. From there, Joe flew back to Washington to work, rented an apartment for us to live in while we looked for a place to live, and I drove on to the Midwest to visit family in various locales over the summer. In the fall, I drove back to the Seattle area so we could begin our house hunting again. We ended up purchasing a lot and having a house built. And, yes, one of the first things I did when the house was complete was to order our mini blinds.

Years later, I ran across a list I had made very early on in that journey that contained things I really wanted in a home. I had forgotten that I had written down such a list early in our search and was surprised how many things on that list were part of the home we had built. I loved and miss that house, not so much for the house itself, but for the time we spent in it with our family. It was our home.

I woke up this morning with an urgency to find a house to buy. As in 1993, interest rates once again are at a historic low and will not remain that way for long. We need to do all we can to make our limited resources work for us.

We have been without a home of our own since 2010 and the few things we have left have been in storage since then. Through various circumstances, we have lived in furnished rentals in Florida and North Carolina (without really even owning any house possessions, such as couches or even our own beds or pots and pans), but have really wanted – and have pursued such over the years – to purchase our own home to live out the rest of our lives. It’s time. Our latest drama has left us exhausted.

So, once again I will make a list again for what will probably be our final home purchase: small house or quiet townhome with low HOA fees in a place with interesting things to do, a place relatively close to family, reasonable price, not too large or too small, not too crowded next to other houses, one level or possibly two, cozy, 2-3 bedrooms with one I can use for an office for my writing and research (I was working on a series of posts for this blog, research now in storage, when we had to move out of our last place), 2 – 2 1/2 baths with a walk in shower in the master (no soaking tub to clean!), lots of sunshine that comes in the windows, hardwood floors, an updated kitchen with plenty of storage and counter space (and a gas stove, if possible), and a small backyard with a patio or screened-in porch. Not too much to ask for, is it?

Home. I long to be finally at home in our own house with our own furnishings. We’ve been making do for far too long. I just don’t know where “home” is any more or where we fit. Joe and I talk about different places and then one of us says to the other, “What’s there for us?” And the other of us says, “I don’t know.” We’re discouraged. We honestly don’t know where we fit or belong. That makes it difficult to know where to buy a house.

We also are constrained by our income. Once I retire, my income drops considerably. Because I homeschooled the kids for so many years and didn’t work during that time, I have a lot of years when I didn’t contribute to Social Security or any retirement plan. I wouldn’t have missed the time with my kids for anything in the world, but the reality we live with now is that we have less to live on in retirement. Joe’s also income dropped precipitously after Jason’s death, so his pension and Social Security are quite a bit less than they would have been had he worked full-time until he was 65 or so.

It’s amazing how secondary losses come into play following the death of a child and how many things and for how long the death of a child can touch. I can honestly say our current situation is at least in part a result of Jason’s death and our brokenness from losing our precious son, and the decisions we made in and based on that brokenness. It is what it is and we have to make the best decisions we can on what we have and where we are now.

Both Joe and I truly struggled incredibly following Jason’s death. We still do. We have always been a positive and optimistic people, but we are discouraged and tired of this journey. It has been hard to find hope. My heart longs to be at home, a place to rest our broken hearts and hopefully find some peace, but I don’t know if we will truly find it until we join Jason in our ultimate home in heaven.

Please keep us in your prayers as we continue to look for a place to call home.

~Becky

© 2020 Rebecca R. Carney

Home

bolstergroup.com

They’re building a new house behind the office where I work. As I looked out the window this morning while waiting for my coffee to brew, I realized that it made me nostalgic for the time we had our house built in Washington. It was a fascinating and exciting experience watching our home come together from a piece of raw land to the finished product.  Not everything went perfectly, as things rarely do, but we were thrilled to watch it going together and even more thrilled when it was complete.

We built our house after a tree fell on the house we were renting. It was quite a journey and nearly two years between the falling tree and moving into our newly-built home. We had stayed with a couple of friends for a while, looked and looked and looked for a house, made an offer on one house that fell through, moved a family of 5 into a small apartment while still having most of our belongings in storage.

At one point in the journey, I was very discouraged. It didn’t seem like we were ever going to find a place to call home. Right around that time, a local radio station just happened to sponsor a poem contest in conjunction with the home show that was going on at the Kingdome. The poem had to be something that reflected the true meaning of the word “home.” I thought, “If there’s something I know (after all we had been through), it’s what the true meaning of a home is.”

I wish I had kept a copy of that poem. It was something about a home being more than the sum of its walls and doors. The poem won second prize, which was high-quality, custom mini blinds for the winner’s whole house. We didn’t have a house at that point, but it gave me hope. I knew that, whenever and wherever we found a home, I had won mini blinds for it!! I felt like God had heard my prayer for a home of our own and this was sort of a down payment on that home-to-be. I called the radio station to let them know we didn’t have a house quite yet, and they and the mini blind company were gracious enough to extend the deadline to claim the prize. One of the first things I did when we moved in was to order our mini blinds!

A few years ago, I found my “wish list” for a house that I had written not long after we had to move out of the tree-damaged rental and early in our house search. It was amazing to look at that list and realize that our Washington house had hit every single thing I had written on that list. No wonder it felt so much like home to me.

I’ve driven by our home a couple of times when I’ve been in Washington. I still think of it as our home. It looks much the same, with only the trees and shrubs taller. The neighbor told us that the “new” owners have paved the driveway. I wonder if our names are still in the concrete where we wrote them in the wet cement of the just-poured foundation.

When we were back in Washington for Christmas recently, we had lunch at the pizza place owned by our former neighbors. It’s interesting to me that every single member of that neighboring family still refers to the house as “your house.” We sold the house over 12 years ago. We’ve been told quite a few comments such as, “They taking good care of your house for you,” and “They paved the driveway up to your house.” I guess we’re not the only ones who still think of it as our home.

I’ve written about what our journey has been since we sold that house, how difficult it was for me to leave Washington and how unsettled and “home-less” (not “homeless”; “home-less” – without a home) I have felt since then. The small one-bedroom apartment we now rent simply doesn’t feel like home. It’s dark; it doesn’t get much sunshine because of the trees surrounding it. None of the furnishings belong to us. A lot of our belongings are still housed in boxes. It’s temporary. Asheville, in general, feels less like home to us since our daughter and her husband moved away, too.

I miss the house that we built in Washington mainly for the reason that it felt like home to me, something I haven’t felt for a very long time, not since we moved from there. It felt like my haven. It was a place filled with sunshine and baking and projects and laughter and game-playing and studying and traditions and friends and family. It was the home filled with the beautiful, sunshine-y presence of our precious Jason. Those were the things that made that house our home.

I miss that true feeling of being “at home.” I don’t know where that is or how to find that feeling again, but I hope to find it some day.

“The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.” – Thomas Jefferson

Missing my boy, today and always.

~Becky

© 2019 Rebecca R. Carney

A New Year

Surveys regularly show up on my Facebook. You know the kind – what will your tombstone read, what color is your aura, what color best matches your personality, can you pass an 8th grade science test? I rarely respond to them or to those “do something or other and pass this on and good luck will come back to you” kinds of things. Sometimes, though, I take a survey just out of curiosity.

This one (above) came up yesterday. I clicked on it and this is the response I got – “This year will be your year. 2017 has given you a hard time, but you stayed strong through it. All your hard work and kindness will bear fruit this year.” My response on Facebook is written at the top of the photo.

I don’t give these things much weight at all, and I don’t give much weight to this one, but I have to admit it got it right that 2017 has been a tough year. Not nearly as tough as the year Jason died. Absolutely nothing could compare to that year by a long shot.

But, there were a couple of things in 2017 that hit me hard, went deep, and profoundly affected me. Both times, I felt like the actions of others hit me in vulnerable places, weaker places in this facade I have carefully pieced together following Jason’s death.

I feel like I put forth a facade, one that protects people from seeing this broken person that hides behind it and protects me from being hurt again. I’ve gotten the impression over the years that people are uncomfortable with my grief and with brokenness, an impression that specifically goes back to the way people reacted to us after Jason died.  I learned how to answer the question, “How many children do you have?” and many more things that only a parent who has had a child die has to deal with. I think a lot of parents who have lost a child would agree that they have to hide the depth of their grief in order to make it palatable to those around them. I recognized this early on and put up a facade to deal with it.

These events in 2017 felt like arrows that went straight through that facade, shot right into my soul, piercing the facade so that it all broke away, leaving only emptiness. I felt like a shell with nothing left inside and nothing on the outside to protect me, like one of those canoes that are stood on end to be used as bookshelves, except without the shelves or anything else in it. Empty. I can’t tell you how many times this year I stood in the shower or sat up during the night crying. I feel things deeply – I always have – and these events went deep. I don’t complain a lot about what I’m going through and I don’t let people see the pain in my heart. I don’t let people close to me. The thing about being vulnerable and allowing people to get close to you is that they can hurt you. They can shoot arrow that goes right into your heart. I guess that’s why I tend to be so guarded.

I wrote this in my journal following one of the painful 2017 events:

I trusted you with my broken heart,

this heart shattered by pain I still cannot bear.

Intentionally and carefully, you shot your arrow

of words straight at my broken heart.

You knew my pain and brokenness, yet you shot anyway.

Your words – that single arrow – cut through the

thin veneer that holds me together.

Deep into my broken heart it went,

tearing  pieces I have worked so hard to mend and

damaging places before not broken.

You have had your say, you have let the arrow fly.

You move on, thinking I should get over it and do the same.

 

I am broken. I am weary. I am an empty shell.

I feel more deeply and heal more slowly than before.

There are so many things I wish I could do over,

things I wish I could change.

The person I was is so different than the person I now am.

I don’t know how to fix this one, this broken mess that I am.

Once strong, now forever broken.

Things once right, now forever wrong.

The people closest hold the most power to hurt.

I have had to guard my broken heart so carefully.

I trusted and let my guard down and you have hurt me.

Too much pain, too much loss, too much broken trust.

People have not been kind with my shattered heart.

It takes an infinite amount of kindness to make up for the sheer lack of it.

It gets harder each time to get up again and keep on trying.

 

The children’s rhyme says, “Sticks and stones may break my bones,

but words will never break me.”

But it’s not true.

I don’t think people realize how much energy it takes to rebuild a life following the death of a child. Some people have more tools to accomplish this task a little easier than others, but it is by no means an easy task for any parent. Piece by piece, carefully searched for. Pieces that are missing, never to be found. It all takes so much time and energy. I don’t think people realize that, once your life has been so badly and deeply shattered, that it’s not that unusual for difficult things to break or to shatter and scatter some of those pieces once again.

I had put so much energy into putting myself back together following Jason’s death. Then we left Seattle and moved to Oklahoma. To this day, no one could convince me that for me, personally, this was not a really bad move. It took me away from a place that Jason loved and from places where I felt connected to him, from familiar things, from our daughter, from our son and grandson, from the only true friend I had in the world. I felt like so much of the hard work I had invested into “moving forward” was gone, only to leave me many steps backwards. I went into survival mode. I pulled my protective shield around me and merely existed, an empty shell once again. For years, I merely existed. Driving home from work one day after living nearly three years in Oklahoma, I realized I felt absolutely no connection there. I really had no friends and hadn’t tried to make any. I really liked our house, but I never felt at home there. I hated Oklahoma. There’s a big difference between living in a house and living in a place that is home. I have never felt “at home” since we sold our house in Snohomish, “got rid of” so many things that made our house a home, and moved from the Seattle area.

When we moved to North Carolina, I worked again at putting myself back together. And now, once again, I’m working on putting pieces of my life back together. I keep trying – and have been trying since Jason died – to put the pieces back together, but so many of them are missing or broken beyond use. It’s not an easy task. These two events from 2017 really took a toll on me. As 2017 rolled into 2018, I sat and pondered the year ahead. I want to have a healthy life, a life of purpose, a life that means something – if only I could figure out how to do that, really do that. I really, truly want this to be a year of healing, of meaning, of purpose, of good things for Joe and me and for our family. I want this to be a year when I can finally feel at least somewhat at home somewhere. They say hope springs eternal. As I said in my Facebook post, one can only hope.

My most sincere hopes and prayers for each of you for a good year ahead.

Hugs,

~Becky

© 2018 Rebecca R. Carney

An Alternate Life

My husband and I recently celebrated our 41st anniversary. It hardly seems possible we have been married that long. We look so young, in love, and full of hope in this picture. In our wildest dreams or our worst nightmares, we never could have imaged the journey we have have been required walk these past fifteen years.

As our daughter and I were recently discussing our upcoming anniversary,  I told her that I feel like I should be in my 40’s instead of celebrating our 41st anniversary. The fact of the matter is that, in some ways, I feel that the world stopped and has been somewhat frozen in time since Jason died. I feel like I should be around 46 years old, the age I as when Jason died. It seems like Jenna should be around 17 and Eric in his 20’s. It feels like Jason should be coming home. It feels like Michael should be just little guy,  sitting at my kitchen table playing with homemade play doh. It feels like I should be looking forward to our kids getting married, to the birth of our grandchildren, to being involved in our grandkids’ lives, showering them with love as only a grandma can, taking them on wonderful adventures and making awesome crafts with them. It feels like there are things that are supposed to happen that never will. It feels like the hope I had for the future has changed so much I can’t see it, I don’t feel it. It feels like I am living the wrong life.

Have you ever watched one of those movies or TV shows where the characters somehow get trapped in another dimension or parallel world? Things are similar, but nothing is the same. The trajectory of their lives has changed. The characters know that they are not supposed to be in this alternate world; they know they have to get back to their real, true lives. Throughout the whole movie or TV show, the characters are trying to figure out a way to go back to the lives they are supposed to be living. They just want to go home.

At times, that’s what it feels like to me. I want to go home, one where all is right with the world, where my kids are all happy and healthy. There is an alternate life I should be living, one where Jason is alive and doing all the things he was supposed to do – hanging out with us, graduating from college, getting married, having kids.

It feels like I should be living a life where Jason is alive. It feels like I should be living in a home I love, one that truly feels like home, a home where our children and grandchildren can walk in the door at any time for any reason to a home full of love and laughter. It is a life where a wonderful young lady marries into our family and is so happy to be a part of our family, a young lady who is a wife to our son and mother to our grandchildren, one who appreciates and cultivates a loving and caring relationship between the family of his childhood and the family of his adulthood.

It is a life where I am connected, one full of family and friends, instead of a life of aloneness. It is a life full of joy and happiness, instead of one always with a shadow of grief. It is a life where I feel truly alive, instead of where part of me is missing. It is a life of hope for better things ahead, instead of one with intimate knowledge that none of us are immune from pain and disaster.

I am living the life I now have to the best of my abilities, this life left to me after the death of our precious son. I live and love and work, but it still doesn’t seem like this is really, truly my life. It is a paler shade of world than the vibrant one that used to be before Jason died. I am a paler version of the person I used to be.

After Jason died, someone gave me a note that said the world was a little less bright now that he was gone. Jason was pure sunshine – loving, caring, kind; an awesome son, brother, friend, person. How could this world be anything else but a pale version of the one that used to be?

You read about or hear bereaved parents say that, after a child dies, they feel like they should wake up from this nightmare. The horror of that nightmare fades some as time goes by, but it never truly goes away. It softens into a recognition that this alternate reality is now the one we have to live. The world we previously knew is gone. We can never go back to the life that once was, the world that once was. I miss that world. I miss my life. I miss my boy.

© 2017 Rebecca R. Carney