Birthdays and brown couches...

Oh my...the sky turned soft pink tonight as I sat outside watching your brothers jump on the trampoline, Noah all legs and arms and Elliott adorable and blissed out to be jumping with his big brother.  They laughed, did tricks, showed off for me I was proud and happy.  I looked up into the sky where heaven is suppose to be and said "Happy Birthday Stevie, I love you so much".  I was wishing you were looking down and sharing the silly moment with me.

You would be 28 this year.  What would you be like?  The odd thing is that I can't imagine you any other way than the way you were, you have always been yourself...I love that "self" I have never met anyone like you and I have never loved and liked someone so much.  Your brother is a lot like you in many ways, physically you both look a lot alike, and you both have the same moral compass, a gentle compassion and understanding of things I can't even begin to grasp, and you are both good at math.  He  lives with you inside him, always trying to make you proud, to do the things you were not able to, he loves you so much and in return I feel a sense of pride I can not explain.

Three birthdays this month.  Your little brother turned three, not sure how that happened, still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that he is actually here.  We celebrated with spiderman, chocolate cake, a big spaghetti dinner and a house full of friends.  I strung up Edison lights in the back yard and made a long table, it was simple but magical.  He is a well loved little boy.

Noah is getting a surprise party.  He will be 16.  You had your pink champagne sweet 16, Aly had her surprise party with a band and rowdy friends.  Noah is getting...a last minute surprise party, a bon fire out back, a handful of drama friends, he has no idea.  He thinks we are going out to dinner.

I didn't go to the cemetery today, I am sorry, it was a long, hot, sad day. I went for a morning walk instead, had a long talk with you then just stayed home, my energy was low, my heart heavy.  I needed a quiet, do--nothing, be-no-where day to just honor you and have my feelings without distraction or false cheer.  Your birthday is the opposite of a celebration, it is remembering that there are no more birthdays, that you are somewhere else and all I have on this day are the memories of the birthdays you did have.  It has to be enough, and I am grateful for every single one of them.

I will go to Oakmont soon...change out fading flowers, I may bring some grass stain, because of the draught they are not watering as much so the park is turning spotty brown.  I have a love hate relationship with that place.  I love it that if you have to be in a cemetery that you are there, it is beautiful.  I love knowing that when I die I get to be with you, I wouldn't want it any other way.  I hate it that you are not here in this room instead of there, I hate the color of the earth there, it is the color of baby poop, I hate that it gets cold at night, that strangers are buried all around you, that my brain is making memories of that place as part of your story.

I bought a couch.  It is random.  We didn't really need a couch, ours is still nice although smelly, and the couch I bought isn't really one I like.  I am surrendering to a house full of boys.  This is a piece of furniture designed for men.  It is dark brown leather (fake) double stitched, it looks like a baseball glove.  It has four recliners, a console to hold remotes and drinks.  It is soft, you could nap all day in it and honestly if you were here you would love it (especially since it isn't real leather).  You wouldn't like the look of it but you would love the feel of it, don't tell the boys but I like the way it feels too.  It is very luxurious.  This is a piece of furniture built for football watching, lounging and ball scratching, it has a wipeable surface so it won't stain or start to smell bad.  It is a sectional so you can have some male bonding over pizza and zombie movies (not that we watch zombie movies)  It is made for comfort, it is not pretty.

Why am I going on about a sofa?  Well, there was a time when this was a girls house, we had pretty things, flowers in the garden, made pretty meals, had big boxes of tampons, drawers full of hair things and make up.  There was an energy in this house that I loved.  It isn't the same, the house is always dirty, I clean more, it doesn't make sense to keep anything pretty no one cares but me.  The house smells like boys...it isn't bad but it is different.  The sofa is me embracing that.  The house has slowly turned to shades of brown, the walls are taupe, the furniture all shades of chocolate.  Anything sweet is in my studio, or in your room.  Things have become simple, no delicate little things to be broken.

I love these boys, they are my life line, they keep my heart beating, they make me smile, they make me cry, they make me proud.

I miss you.  I miss the three of us (you, me, Aly).  Now my side kicks are Elliott and Noah, there is less drama, no house of PMS hell, no one needs hair braided or eyebrows tweezed, no one to go bra shopping with, no one to steal my make up, no cute socks to buy and pajamas to share...but there is something warm and good about boy energy.

I will have this big ugly couch, giant tennis shoes, dinosaurs, shaving cream, construction vehicles, baseballs, deep voices, messy dinners, but I have a place to cuddle at the end of the night, and I am making this a home they feel good in.

Everything changes.

I still keep you here, I have your clothes in your closet, your trees are still on the walls, I cook with your crappy knives you bought and I wear the pajamas you left that haven't fallen apart.  Your pink blanket is in the blanket chest and in the winter I wrap it around myself and pretend you are wrapped around me.

You came to me in a dream several days ago.  You were in the sunroom, sitting on the old Ikea couch, smiling.  I was in the kitchen talking to your brother and sister, there were people here, a party?  I looked through the open space that use to be our kitchen window before we put the sunroom in, and there you were...you.  It didn't register at first but then I remembered that you couldn't be there, and my heart began to race, I was happy and afraid and I thought, "Damn I am dreaming" I looked around and everything seemed pretty solid and real, there was nothing dreamlike, everything was as it should be, but you were there.  I didn't know what to do, I didn't want you to be a dream...then you started coming towards me, almost floating through the window until I could reach out and wrap my arms around you. You were real, your skin just the same.  I kissed your cheeks and shoulders and I just kept saying, "I love you,  I love you"  In my dreams I have never felt what I did and that was you telling me you loved me and missed me too, it was all telepathic but it was clear and it made me so happy.  I woke up...

That dream has stayed with me, even as I type this I feel it again.

I don't know what to believe Stevie but I don't even care, if felt so beautiful, it was such a gift.

Thank you.

Happy Birthday sweet love.

Eight

This was our last day and we didn't know, it was scary, I wish we would have stayed at home in your room, listened to music, just fallen asleep in your bed...

I wish you didn't die.

I miss you so much, there is not a word in any language that I know that can describe this feeling, this ache.  I pretend to be normal, I do normal things, I let life distract me because it must.  If I peel off this skin I have made for myself, this protective layer I am raw, like a burn victim who has had the debris removed I am wet and sticky, my nerves exposed I am pure pain, I am vulnerable and normal life can infect me and kill me.

Today a sliver peeled away when I wasn't paying attention.  I remembered so many things, small things that were stored away in me;  the blue cotton dress that wasn't really you but it was easy, it made it easy for me, listening to the rocket CD in the sunroom, Noah writing you a poem on the magnet board, you ordering books on Amazon that would arrive after you left.  I remembered the last car ride...I can't breath, it has been too long.

I have learned to smile in all the right places, to say what people want to hear, to act like I am stronger than I am.  Your brothers and sisters are a balm for my heart they keep my body here and what is left of me alive.  The real me left when you did, she curled up into a little ball,  she receded into the darkness, she is quiet and alone, I keep her safe, I feed her stories, I tell her not to worry that someday it will be Ok, someday we will be with you again and this will all be a bad dream.

I dream of a heaven, my heaven, where I will have a big house full of light, no doors, just a path that leads inside.  It will be filled with large rooms, moms and babies all transitioning in and out, it will be a hospital of sorts, a place to heal, to sleep, to recover, to decide.  My job will be to provide a place where it can happen.

You will have your heaven and someday your brothers and sisters will too, even Claire will have her heaven and I will get to know her there.  We will all drift in and out of each others place, and it will be beautiful we will remember and learn and celebrated.  No time, no space, just being here or there or everywhere at one time.  It is comforting, I wish I could paint it or write it or visit it in my dreams.

Tomorrow we will go to the cemetery, I don't know what kind of flowers I will bring, maybe I will find the tulips...all yellow.  I will bring you fruit and chocolate cake and we will play music.  There will be tears for you body baby, tears because we miss you so much, tears because it isn't fair and there is nothing we can do but cry.

I went to the bookstore today, bought a little book that called to me, I am going to write more I promise.  I felt you there, just for a moment, I felt myself melting, I repeated silently, I am here Stevie, I am right here.

You are here now, its not the you I knew before, its the after you, I have learned to love this you, the one I can't touch or kiss, a voice I can't hear with my ears, but I smell you when I walk past a flowering fruit tree,  and when the sun warms your room.  I see you when there is a full moon, when the sky turns pink, in Noah's eyes...your music still plays in this house, your books are right were they always have been, all those words, all those pages you touched, it is almost like touching you.

Sometimes I am afraid I am forgetting, but I don't I am just not strong enough to peel away my costume and expose myself to the air and light, to feel all that pain, it is unbearable but I would rather have that than nothing so I protect it all, keep it sealed up tight, wrap it around "me" like a blanket there in the quiet, there in the waiting place.

I love you, with all my heart, with my fractured soul.  It doesn't stop, it never changes, it is love.

Don't be too far away, eight years, eight years, eight years...

Almost April...

I forget about this blog...it use to be my lifeline.

Life goes on...I hate it when people say that but it's true, it does, bills have to be paid, laundry needs folding, lunches need making, babies need nursing, gardens need tending, bathrooms need repairing.  You realize one day that almost 9 years has gone by, you haven't been to the cemetery since December, you can't remember what her hair smelled like.

Then one morning you wake up from a dream.

You were on a pay phone calling me from college, you had a history class that was going until 8pm and I was worried, I wanted you home.  Some guys were bugging you, a friend, his name was Anthony he was teasing you about some junk mail about mortgages and the number 80.  You sounded happy, distracted but I told you I needed you to come home, I missed you.  You told me you were fine, you would see me later not to worry you had a ride home.

Then it was just like yesterday... no time had passed, we left the hospital without you, you were zipped up in a bag in refrigerator in a mortuary and I was home and it was quiet and you were not here and my world crumbled and there was no forgetting.

I thanked you for the dream when I could catch my breath, when I talked myself down and repeated, "she never left she never left she is just someplace else where I can't see her but she is still her, still herself, still alive just not here in this house, on this planet, the way you understand, its ok, its going to be ok."  I forced myself to believe it because if I couldn't I wouldn't be able to pull myself back together.

I am grateful for the dream, if it was you Stevie I get it, if it was me I get it too.

The grief never goes away, it just hides.

Next month I will bring you tulips, I always do in the spring.  I won't stay long, and I won't cry until I have to leave.  Sometimes I never want to leave and sometimes I panic knowing that one day I will be in that very same grave with you and Noah, Aly and Elliott will be in the same pain.  I don't want that for them, I wish this on no one.

I will be 50 this summer.  We are going to Hawaii.  Aly will be 30 and Noah will turn 16 so it is a big year for birthdays, we need a celebration.  I will try not to let dad ruin it for me.  We just don't get along, hard to be in the same room with each other but we continue on because this family does not need anymore loss, because this family is all we really have.

He keeps waiting for me to change my mind, to want this to work, to make it better.  I won't, I can't, we flat lined a long time ago.  They say marriages rarely survive the loss of a child, I don't think it was cancer that made us fall apart I think we were already falling apart a long time ago.

The thing for me is that my marriage use to be so big to me, so important, it was a life of its own and I tried to save it so many times even when I didn't really want to, I did it because it was right.  Now it seems almost silly, I can't make sense of it, I can't remember a time when it felt good, when I felt happy in it.  Now it is something we must do for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with happiness.

The biggest thing in my life now are your brothers and sister.  It is what I am here for.  I find pleasure in art, a good book, a pretty day, fruit on our trees, a song but my heart is beating for my kids, it is my purpose, it gives my life meaning.

Elliott is so big, I am  in love with his face, his big brown eyes, the way he says "Mommy" none of you called me mommy, not sure why he does but I love it.  He wakes up grumpy, he falls asleep next to me, he loves fruit and green peas, being outside and soccer balls.  He melts my heart.

Noah is a teenager, he shaves, he has a deep voice, he is moody, has a messy room, still loves music, still says things that make me wonder who the hell he is and how I got lucky to have a son with such a beautiful soul.

Your sister is out on her own, we never see her, she texts she calls (once in a while)  she is enjoying her life, dating, making friends, I miss her.

The house changes more and more.  We just re-did the back bathroom, it had water damaged, took it down to the studs, removed everything you ever touched, the shower door I wrote you letters on in the steam went into a dumpster, it was hard to do.  I wrote you letters on the sheetrock before we painted.

The guest bathroom got a face lift.  I found a giclee at Target.  I walked down that isle three times, not sure why, then I saw it, a white horse, a pink sky...I said out loud, "Oh Stevie I love it" and I brought it home and decorated around it.  The walls are a creamy beige with an accent wall that looks like cocoa when you mix it with cake batter.  I bought peachy pink guess towels, lavender soap in a pretty pink container.  I changed out the cabinet and mirror, white, it looks pretty up against the brown.  I made a mosaic backsplash out of tiny glass and stone tiles.  It is very peaceful in there and even though it is all new(isn) I imagine you there, you would love it.

I am not my best person.  I am damaged, I am angry.  I am fat.  I am going through a mid-life crisis I think.  I am looking at my life differently.  I want change, I want to do better be better but for myself. I need to wake up and like me.  I have been so use to staying distracted I forgot about me.  My body is out of shape, it is flabby and bumpy, my skin is gross, my hair is dry, I am wrinkly.  I see photos and I don't see "me" in them anymore.  I need to be "me" again, or find me (cliche) if for no other reason than I need to show up better for these kids.  I don't want them to look back at this me.

I am feeling emotional.  I need to sit next to you rub your feet and talk...I need to hear your voice.

Promise me Stevie when my time comes you will be there, you will be the first person, promise that this isn't all there is that there is something else and you are there.

I am going to go to bed and try to sleep off some of this ache.

I love you.