I have buried two sons, my first at one year 2 weeks, just starting life, and the second 2 months shy of turning 40, starting life over happy.

I turned inward with my first and outward with my second. I forgot with both how others were affected except for my son's finance as her pain was palpable.

I have come to realize how death hits an entire family and how we all mourn for the memory of and the future that would have been.

I forget, lost in a mother’s pain, that there are sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles all in pain too. Thankfully yet sadly all his grandmas were gone for my older son, my mom never recovering from her youngest grandson’s death.

I forgot that some of my children have never faced death yet and don’t know how to handle it, wanting to hide out of the unknown for you their parent. Fearful of what to say, how to act, what to do…will they make me cry?

As children we never went to funerals, people died, we never saw them again and death was a mystery. Then around 35 years of age I lost a dear friend in a horrible car accident, I remember sitting in my car at the wrecking yard staring at his tangled wreck sobbing, alone, as by then that husband had turned to others. Friends got me through the day and I have buried more than my share since then and find I cry then let them go to remember sometimes in a good way.

As we age people die and be it our parents, our children or a dear friend we all say goodbye differently, we all mourn differently and we need, I need, to remember there are many who mourn my son and I need to help them understand how I see death, how I see our afterlife and then be willing to listen to them and what they see, being there for them as they too grieve for what could have, should have been.

We always say I wish we had more time, we always wish to wake up…if nothing else comes from my child’s death I would wish that as a parent you hold your child tighter, as a sibling you offer the first peaceful gesture to get back in their lives and as a human being you hold everyone, everyone around you in a gentle embrace and realize we all have bad days, we all have lost somebody and time doesn’t care what you wish for it just keeps marching steadily forward until one day we too will be mourned.

 I believe it is how you live your life that counts and if all those who mourned at my son’s funeral were an example then I know my son lead a full, loving life and that is more than many people ever strive for in their pursuit of meme and what can they get for themselves.

In time I will cry less, I will stop waking up panicked remembering the last day, the look on his face when they took the ventilator out and I just glanced for that second but that was not my son, that was a shell he used to love life and we called him Joey.

He will always be with me, I feel him around me and I am no longer scared in my room at night when the visitors come as I am now being watched over as well as, I hope, his love Laura and his family are.

Quit waiting around for others to make the first move, to apologize for some slight you have felt, some evil that possessed them for a time or else accept that someday they will be gone too and then it will be too late.

Life is short and it is time for me to get off my butt and start living again, right after I am done grieving for my loss, I will keep him with me in my heart forever, I plan on forcing myself to take steps that go only forward and even though I may have setbacks I will continue to rally until I hear my laugh flowing freely from my soul once again.

It is what my son would have wanted ….