Another Anniversary

It is now almost 3 years and this is going to be a frank one:

Since that day in January 2011, our lives have become so different...with a different outlook, priorities and challenges. Eoghan's arrival has helped us along this journey into the unknown. While our innocence is gone forever, he has helped us re-build our confidence as parents...that still being a work in progress though. The pain has not lessened but has changed. 

In the last 3 years, amid many good and happy days, I have done a lot of missing, hurting, feeling low and depressed. There has been one occasion when I felt so numb that I wanted to and have self-harmed to see if the physical pain would help get alleviate the emotional. (It does not.) There have been times when I thought that surely the world might just be better off without me. Moments when I thought that I am no use to Pat or Eoghan in this state of sadness.

Before anyone gets panicky, suicide isn't and never has been an option for me. These musings and thoughts are just the sometimes harsh reality of grieving - for me.

I want to grow old with Pat and see Eoghan turn into a teenager and adult, making his own way in the world. I want to see him get married and have a family of his own. I want to live life. It is precious and we never know when our time is up. I know I am needed here and want to spend my time with the people that mean so much to me. Despite bouts of feeling very low, I have always felt very much aware of how much pain and hurt that kind of a decision on my part would burden onto Pat, Eoghan and my family and friends.*

In time, us bereaved parents may look and act normal but trust me, underneath it all, we are not the same...How could you remain the same after something like this? There is a tear threatening behind that smile and a longing to be normal again; for it all to just unhappen. 

Standing at his grave still feels as surreal now as it did then. Triggers are diverse. Christmasses, Anniversaries, Birthdays can be hard days that are expected to be so. Then there are those days on which you get hit by an unmerciful wave of miss for no apparent reason…Perhaps, when you look at your subsequent son and briefly think of how different things should be. Then there are flashbacks or the realisation that his smell is slowly fading from his comfort blanky and that memories of him and his brother as babies begin to bleed into one. You are scared you will forget, that the world will forget.

For anyone wondering how we “do it" or “get through it”?

Because we have to. Life pulls us along. The earth keeps turning, whether we like it or not. You keep going because you have to and because you begin to want to again, too . You go back to work. Life demands and wants to be lived.

There is a heartache that is always within, lingering in the depths of your being. Over time, it becomes familiar and we somehow learnt to live with its presence. It is the bitter for every single one of those many sweet thing in our life.


Miss you and love you always and forever, my darling.
Xxx

*My heart goes out to those who lose that last shred of hope and whose souls are in so much despair that leaving this life becomes the only option they see. I realise those feelings of theirs are very much real and very painful. I wish they could see that there always is a new day. These feelings will pass.
But this act, once done, is not something that can be undone. Many many more lives are shattered as a result. Whether they realise it or not, they will be missed. Dearly.

It makes me so very sad to think that someone could be in that much pain and feel that alone. I wish that we, as a society, were more in tune with those peoples sometimes subtle requests for our help. It is very hard to bear these inner most feelings and thoughts to even the closest of friends or family.