Ten Years

I remember sitting in a chair in our living room, facing the window, across from Iain and my mom.  The words "I just want it to be ten years from now" coming out of my mouth.  I am pretty sure I was not thinking that everything would be fine in ten years...probably just that I did not want it to be now.  Because now was so brutal and horrific that it felt like it would take me ten years to move an inch from that place.  I also remember saying that I was pretty sure I would never feel joy again.

So, voila!  Here I am.  Ten years later.  It's such a difficult thing, to try to figure out how I feel vs. how I thought I would feel.  In some respects, life is so much better than I ever thought it would be and in some respects it is no different.  That feeling of grief for your child just never goes away.  No matter how fast you try to outrun it, you never can.  I can so easily drum up those feelings that I felt in those first weeks and months after he died but most times I dare not.  Sometimes I do, though.  It feels necessary.  I don't find it necessary to visit where he is laid to rest, so maybe this is my "visit the cemetery." 

It's hard not to stare it right in the face...this ten year anniversary.  But, where I am now is very, very good.  It is very, very bright and wonderful and full of wonder.  I dare not entertain anyone who starts to go down the "if he hadn't died" road, indicating we would not have the children we do have...the living, breathing ones.  That is something that not only will we never know, but it does not matter.  None of the what if's matter.  Learned that lesson the hard way, huh?  He did die.  And we do have these living, breathing children.  No platitudes necessary.  And speaking of these children, somehow it has all worked out just the way it was supposed to.  God sent them to us just as he sent us Ziggy...I do know that for sure.  Some day I might have answers, and I might not, but that doesn't really matter to me anymore either.  

I like to think that I no longer have one foot in the grave, longing to be with my dead child.  I no longer dwell on the fact that he is dead.  I no longer define myself by his death.  That is what ten years does.  But that's about where it ends.  He is still as important and as real, but even more important and more real are the three that followed.