Grieving Out Loud

Grieving Out Loud My beautiful son died on Oct 27, 2023. We buried him today, Nov 6. I need to write out loud.

11/13/2025

Hope. I need to find Hope.

10/30/2025

There's faith. There's love. But hope, that is a hard one.

As I live in the conclusion of my life, It feels like I'm living in a run on prologue of a novel. Hopelessness, that feeling in my gut that won't go away. Hopelessness creeps into my ear and whispers, "why bother, he's not coming back. Not today, not ever."

Hopelessness. There's up because there's down, east because of west, dark because of light. In my first life, I didn't ever understand hope because I never understood hopelessness. Here in the prologue, I do understand hope because here in the prologue I understand hopelessness. Most of the time I feel like I have 2 pieces of a million piece jigsaw puzzle, the ones I once loved to put together. These two pieces I'm holding onto aren't even from the same puzzle, but I hold onto them. I hold onto these two pieces because something in me has hope. I don't know what it is that I'm hoping for but for some reason, I'm holding onto any scraps I can find.

09/24/2025

It's not that people don't understand. It's that, after all is said and done, down deep, they simply do not care. It was my son laying in the casket. Others in the room, not fully aware of it themselves, breathing a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank God it didn't happen to me". Some still call and visit, and patiently wait while I pull myself together.

For me now, I walk alone. Quietly. No longer thinking but if a memory floats past me, sometimes I peer into it and softly smile. Other times I let it drift by. The warm air is becoming heavy and I find myself looking for the cool, maybe even icy air. So cold that it could freeze my thoughts, my memories, my tears in place, eternally.

How I miss my son. After all the tears and all the screams, the only thing that remains is that I just miss him and wish so much that he was here.

08/26/2025

AM to PM. Each day is open, a chance to serve, do my duty, walk the path. Each day I try to find meaning, love and moments of joy. Each day I honor God, the living God in people, in nature and in myself. Every day I toil, every day I try. Most days I fail but I do try.

PM to AM. Z-quill or Benedryll, Curb or The Office? Sleep is never solid, it's scraps, it's bits and pieces, it's dozes but never solid hours, never. That's ok, the body is still functioning.

Somehow, I can serve this world, somehow I can do my duty here because somehow, I will find my Russell when I leave this life behind. I need to make it from AM to PM and back again, round and round, until like a magical carousel horse breaking free from the circular path, I will race across the universe and find my Russell. There you'll be waiting, smiling, there, at the end of time I will find you.

08/05/2025

I'm a stranger, not only in the giant big world but also in my own home, my own family, our family.

Once I filled my life with books, family, music, art, travel, writing, recipes, long walks, horses, flowers, swimming. Nothing is familiar now, everything is bland, there is no more color. I pray, I ask Jesus to help me but I don't know what I'm asking for. I ask for something to have taste on my tongue again. Even the sourest lemon. Writing has dried up, there is no more moisture in this world, it's so dry and it's just blowing away.

07/22/2025

How long will this drag on? I sleep in scraps.

When I was a child, we were fishing and I remember how those fish looked laying on the sand, gasping but no longer squirming. Their bodies' missing the water. So helpless on the land with the glare of the Sun overhead. It hurt me to see their little mouths moving and those fish eyes looking at the world above the water line, seeing us, these large creatures with lidded eyes, bald faces and patchy fur.

Now it's me feeling helpless, confused and tiring fast. Now it's me looking at a world I never knew existed. Now it's me drying out, slowly.

A close friend is staying with me this week, my college roommate. We've stayed in touch throughout our lives. She's still asleep upstairs, I'm having a coffee, my husband has gone into work today. Life feels calm, even pleasant. But inside, I'm like the fish. Waiting for the Sun to make its final zap.

07/03/2025

I had to call my doctor for a refill and he's not in today. I asked if he'd be in tomorrow and was told, no, we're closed because it is the 4th of July holiday tomorrow.

I totally missed that tomorrow is another holiday. I feel like a ghost among the living. I don't fit here without Russ.

06/30/2025

That lost potential, the what could have been, even the what should have been is now what won't ever be. That's the emptiness, that's the blankness. A few weeks ago I was listening to Classical Music. A piece played, I don't remember its name, that doesn't matter. It made me cry, the beauty of that music, it brought up some strong feeling in me, a feeling of God, a feeling of love. After it played I sat. I thought, that's really the air I hear. Music is energy moving in the air. Right now in this room, all the music is potentially here, all that potential, in a way, actually kind of exists. Like the Cat in the Box Paradox. The Cat is alive and the cat is not alive in the box at the same time.

As always my mind settles on Russell. That potential that in a way exists but I can't touch it, I can't see it. It's enough to drive me mad. Less and less I wonder why. God's in his corner ruling the empire and I'm in mine, head down and beaten. I'll never know what gain there is to this universe because it comes at a loss in me that's the size of the ocean. The silence is becoming complete in me. There are no answers and I've stopped asking questions.

05/31/2025

Lately I've been thinking, thinking about who I was going to become as an older person. The cheerfulness I would have brought to my circle of friends and family, the potential in me.

My son's loss goes wide and goes deep. The world lost him, his friends and family lost his potential, his love, his humor, his smile. And there is the secondary loss of me and of his brother's potential.

One life affects so many. A wide expanse and deep.

In my youth I used to hear the wind sometimes, softly and sorrowfully calling. That wind, carries the loss of all the potential that never had its chance, its chance to grow and bring to the world its song. Those songs, I still hear, in the woods.

05/31/2025

I want to sit, sit by myself without any expectations from anyone that I move and "do something". I want to sit on an empty beach, with the water, wrapped in a towel and have a kind lady bring me coffee from a cottage. I want to sit on that beach, by the cottage wrapped up in a towel and let the water lick my feet and slowly, I want to let the water surround me. I want to sit there until time ends, wrapped in a towel with a kind lady bringing me coffee watching the birds and the crabs. I want to sit.

05/18/2025

I'm drifting in space without a tether. All the reason for being here vanished in that instant.

04/13/2025

It's 6:30 pm, here I am getting into bed. I tell myself I'm just going to relax a bit, but the fact is I'll stay here until morning. Not sleeping really, lightly dozing, scrolling, z-quill to help reduce the memories.

The day of your funeral, family surrounded us. Friends came to share the grief, to mourn. A few days later the closest people got to pack up, pull out of the driveway and drive back home. I can't get home ever again, "home" doesn't exist for me anymore. I knew how they must have felt, putting distance between themselves and my tragedy, a dead son, a casket. How easier the air was for them to breathe as they got to leave. I hated everyone in the world who got to breathe that day and I hated myself for hating the world.

How do I learn how to love a new world? One that's forever empty?

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2304 Penarth Court
Zebulon, NC
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