Thoughts on Losing a Child

It's been 10 1/2 months since an officer showed up at my door and told me that Tanner was gone. It's therapeutic to retell the details of those first few days, but I'll leave the full story for another time. For the first few hours it felt like a nightmare. I must have said a million times that I wanted to wake up to find that none of it was real. And then a sort of fog came over me. I'm sure there are people who would say that God carried me through, that the fog was the comfort of the Holy Ghost. That's not how I would describe it. Whatever it was, my senses were dulled enough that I was able to kind of sleepwalk through the horrors we had to endure. Telling the kids. Getting Tanner's things out of his apartment, which involved plying hundreds of thumbtacks out of the wall with my fingernails, throwing the dirty socks and underwear in a garbage bag because there was no point in washing them, putting everything in the back of my car not knowing what on earth we were going to do with it all. Then there was the trip to the funeral home, where we talked about how to get Tanner's body to Utah for the funeral and burial after the memorial here in Spokane. Where we were taken into a huge room full of caskets and we had to decide which one was right for our son. I have no clue, not even a ballpark figure, of how much we spent on the casket. It is all such a huge blur.

I wish I were still in that sleepwalking phase. I think the fog must slowly clear a little each day. And that's the problem. Finding out is hell. I literally fell to the floor like some lady in a tv drama and yelled "no" several times. But I had no idea that it would just get more painful. Every day it becomes a little bit more real. There are new reminders that he's never coming back. And then there are the days when I wake up and think about calling or texting him. and then get the wind knocked out of me with the realization that I can't.

So I'm sitting here sobbing as I type this, and I am an empty shell. I have no idea who I was on March 15th of 2018, but I am not that person now. I went through a rebirth of sorts when Aidan was diagnosed with cancer. I was actually standing in the same spot in my piano room when I found out about Tanner that I was standing in when the doctor told me about Aidan on the phone. And there was that blur of talking to the doctors, and then 2 days after finding out, we were in the hospital starting the hellish journey that has lasted almost 3 years now. When Aidan got sick I cleared out all of the fluff that I had filled our life with. I'm not sure what all of that fluff was. I know there was helping out in the kids' classrooms, and taking people dinners, and making blankets for my friends' new babies. Most of what I can remember that I used to do was service-oriented. That kind of sucks. But life got filled up with so many appointments. So many appointments. So many trips to the pharmacy. Fighting Aidan to take his meds in the beginning. Then fighting him about every single thing in life. I became a different person. I remember trying to decide if I could let him sleep without me like a normal child. Was I supposed to live life as if every day was the last and be terrified to miss a second? Or was I supposed to believe that he would be ok and try to treat him like a regular kid? The only thing I could do was take myself to the darkest place I could imagine in my mind. I pictured him dying. I tried to picture our family dealing with that. I pictured families I know who have lost children and while it obviously wasn't an easy thing, they were all still alive and breathing. Smiling even, sometimes. I knew that John and I would band together and get our family through it. So I put Aidan in his own bed and started out a new life that I didn't recognize. I was a new person I didn't recognize.

Aidan's diagnosis came on March 30th, 2016. Tanner went to sleep on March 14th 2 years later and never woke up.

At some point after Tanner died (not sure when), my brain started processing things. I realized that I had lost all hope. I didn't believe anymore that Aidan would beat cancer. I didn't believe that another one of my kids wouldn't get hit by a bus or that John would make it home safely from work trips. And I realized that when I thought I had faced the idea of death head on, that I had absolutely no clue what it actually looked like.

So I cleaned house again on what we did with our time. I know that I cut out more of my to-do list after Tanner died to make room for grief. And once again, I can't tell you what I simplified. I don't know what we used to do. I know that we have even more appointments now, because I have every one of us in therapy of some kind, but I cut out a bunch of stuff, and I don't know what. And I lost me.

So here I am, this empty shell of a person. I take my kids to school in the morning. I try to keep up on laundry. I cook dinner sometimes. We get take out more often. I'm working on being better about that. I drag myself to the grocery store. I guess that's pretty good. For months I couldn't go to the store by myself. The first time I actually did I bought everything I could possibly think of because I couldn't fathom going back. It took 2 shopping carts to get everything to the car. And when the cashier asked me what on earth I was stocking up for, I couldn't help but tell him that my son had died and I can't grocery shop anymore. So I have that basic functioning part of my brain still. The rest of my brain must be gone. I have no idea who I am. Don't get me wrong, I have all of my memories. I have my family and some of my friends. But I don't recognize me anymore.

I guess this is a chance to reinvent myself. I could decide who I want to be, and then fill myself back up with that new and improved version of me. Any idea how to do that? Maybe I will be more able to do that as time passes. I'm still in the punch-in-the-gut phase of grief. We're still living all of the "firsts." First Christmas. First birthday. First every-tiny-little-thing as these new people who are missing one of their children. It's excruciating. So I'm trying to be very patient with myself. Can't make dinner tonight? Order a pizza and snuggle on the couch with the kids watching stupid stuff on tv. Can't bring myself to run errands during preschool? It's ok. Go lie in bed until it's time to pick up Xander. This is not the time for me to try to accomplish more. The only expectation I really have of myself right now is that I take care of my family. That I am here for my husband, and that I make sure my kids are as ok as they can be. Sometimes the weight of that feels crushing. Often I feel like I can barely breathe. So.......patience.

If I actually post this to my blog, I have to kindly ask to not hear certain comments. First of all, time does not "heal" in this case. When you lose someone, you learn to live with the giant hole in your heart. It doesn't go away. I really don't want to hear that I need to pray more or have faith. Also, Tanner is not in a better place. His place is with his friends and family. His place is at our dinner table on Thanksgiving. I'm not concerned with where Tanner is, except that he's not with us. Sorry, I've heard a lot of very un-helpful things in the last 10 months.

If you've read this far, you must be someone who knows and loves me. I realize that it's very garbled and rambling and makes little sense. And it's raw and awful and painful. So I appreciate you getting this far and being here for me and loving me. My relationships are the most important thing to me now. Much love to you for being a friend.