Lamentations

I go back to work tomorrow. I have thank you cards yet to write and I can't get myself motivated to do them. There has been so much kindness and thoughtfulness and I am very grateful, but I still feel a bit lost in the wilderness and can't get myself to sit down and write those notes. I'm embarrassed that I have not done them yet.

There are things I need to get done and worked out at work before I can schedule my second surgery.

I'd really like to crawl in a hole somewhere and hide for another month or two.

This is not the shape in which I thought I'd be entering into 2012. No, it's not.

I know things will get better, or easier, or both, but right now things are tough.

It snowed the night before he died. This is the last text I received from him, with the simple caption of "snowman", as if I couldn't figure it out! Earlier, he'd told me he liked it up there and he was learning a lot.

It takes a lot for me to leave that cigarette in the snowman's mouth. It is a painful, embarrassing (and now public) reminder of lifestyle choices he made that I would never have approved of, choices that were way off the track of the things I had dreamed for him. But, on the other hand, he was so much more than just the painful, embarrassing and public crummy choices he made.

He had friends who loved him so much and who will miss him, friends who spoke of his good and kind heart, friends who could not save him, just like his mother couldn't save him. And he leaves the biggest, fattest hole in all our hearts.

I am grateful for my faith, that tells me he is at peace, that tells me there is hope for those of us who are continuing our journeys without him, grateful for healing that will come, though there will be scars.

Yesterday in church, we heard of another family who lost their son under similar circumstances. Such sadness. And another family was there with a son-in-law who has been in rehab and was out on a visitation pass. Such hope. I thought of all us mothers and family members who have such hopes and dreams for their sons and loved ones. Life can be such a bittersweet experience.