Understanding

My mother believes I have to let my son go. She believes blogging about him is making the situation harder. She tells me not to be upset if other people don't ask about him anymore, or wonder how we as a family, are doing. She says the world still misses him, but they have chosen to move on, because they have to, because it is the only thing to do.

And I agree. And I thought I was moving on. I work everyday at a greenhouse while the kids are at school. I go out and visit. I shop. I laugh. I cry. I am working through my feelings, trying to separate the pain from the joy. But I am also working on doing the one thing that keeps me from sobbing so hard it stops me from breathing. I am trying to hang on to his memories. Because that is the only thing I have left, other than the stretch marks and bad back he gave me. Memories and love. Because in a blink of an eye, POOF! It was all gone. He was gone.

I know that many people don't understand my attachment to the little Bug. He didn't smile, he didn't joke, he didn't do a lot. But he loved, and he had value, whether he was born whole or not. He was the heart beat of this family, shaping all of us into better people than we were before his arrival. I know his existence made some uncomfortable and now, in his death, he managed to do it again. I understand this, even if I don't like it.

I also know the suddenness of his death is complicating things. He wasn't dying from a lingering disease. He had no terminal prognosis, no deathly diagnosis. His body just quit, and no one can explain why. And truthfully, that hurts. The pain I feel is different than a parent who had to watch their child slip away for weeks and months. That would be torture. Yet, in the end, both pains are equal, because the loss is equal. I understand this.

What I don't understand is why is it wrong to want to remember him, document him, so that when his now 8 and 9 year old siblings grow up, they will have actual memories to relive. Not fuzzy images warped over time.

My mom says people are saddened by how grief has affected me. So am I. But I can't change it, even though I would give my soul to have him back. I don't understand how I am supposed to let him go, stop thinking of him, stop remembering.

Like so many other things, I just don't understand.