Distraction

Over dinner tonight, I remarked to Adam that I'm profoundly grateful for the Olympics. I'm not generally a big sports junkie, but he didn't have to ask why. The value of a time-consuming distraction is immeasurable. And I'm fully immersing myself in that delightfully immeasurable distraction.

Logan's 6th birthday is in two days. It's not that I'm trying to forget it or avoid it. No, I could never forget. I don't want to forget. I want to honor the anniversary of the day I first laid eyes on and fell in love with him. I want to do the things that he loved to do, eat the foods that he loved to eat, and be with the people he loved best. And I'll do those things on July 31.

But to keep my heart from breaking until then, I'll distract myself with the Games; with stories of triumph and victory and success. And in some cases, sadness and disappointment. And I'll continue my frenetic freelancing, too. Because a good distraction can be hard to find, and I'm blessed to have a good one at my disposal.

Overwhelming

It's 11:24 PM. Once again, I'm not asleep. I should be; Abby and Isaac have VBS bright and early in the morning. But it doesn't really matter that I should be sleeping; I'm just not.

Life feels utterly overwhelming right now. VBS is hard to take. I remember how much Logan enjoyed the two years he attended. It's hard to see the kids who would've been his classmates. It's hard to see the parents who know what happened to us but don't say a word about it. I guess that sounds weird, but one of my biggest fears is that Logan will be forgotten. I fear the day when people stop talking about him. I fear the time when it'll become commonplace for me to say 'well, I have one more child, too...'

On top of that, Isaac's OT evaluation is tomorrow. At CHO. The OT office is in the main hospital building, not far from the room where Logan departed this life. I've not been back there since that day. I'm honestly not sure if I'll be able to go inside. I remember how hard it was to go inside Logan's preschool classroom for the graduation ceremony he was denied. I remember how the feeling of sorrow was so powerful that it seemed to rip away at my very flesh. And now going back... I just don't know how it'll hit me.

And of course, the impending birthday. I cried a lot today. The first few times, they were random tears. Of sadness, of course. Rooted in missing my sunny boy. But the third happened when I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom, flipping through an album containing his artwork. I came across the invitations he'd written to his friends. Invitations to a birthday party that won't happen. I remember snatches of the day that he wrote them out. It seemed silly at the time; his birthday is July 31, yet there he was in October of last year, writing out personalized invitations asking his friends to please come to his birthday party. We'll do what he wanted to do, but there won't be a cake or candles or a happy birthday song. There won't be a birthday boy turning six years old. Nothing makes that any better. But I know that it has to be okay because nothing can change it. It's just... not.

Before I lie down once again to try to rest (knowing full well that I'll probably wind up staring at the ceiling for an hour yet again), I want to take a moment to thank everyone who's reached out to me these past months. Even if I haven't been responsive, I've appreciated the contact. The effort. Because I'm not going to reach out right now. I can't. I'm too busy using my own hands to try to hold the pieces of my heart together.

Mid-Month

I did something a little 'off the beaten path' yesterday. I asked my Facebook friends --at least the ones who were willing-- to share their personal 'Worst Thing' moments or times. The times that were most challenging, heartbreaking, upsetting, life-changing. You get the point.

I didn't do this to be nosy or to pry or to try to out-worstify (sorry, I can't find the word I'm looking for there) anyone else's worst-ever event. No, I asked with precisely the opposite goal in mind: so I'd know that despite how things look on the outside, despite how shiny and happy everyone else seems to me in the wake of losing Logan, there isn't a single person out there who hasn't suffered some sort of pain during this life. It wasn't all about focusing on the bad; no, it was a way for me to look at the bad, and see how it's changed others for the better. To get a small outsiders' taste of another's journey.

I've heard from a good number of people. In a way, the results have surprised me. Some of the events shared broke my heart. Some of them made me gasp. But none of them --not a SINGLE ONE-- changed my view of the person who shared, except maybe to make her (and I can use 'her' here because every respondent has been female) look stronger. Like a survivor. And that's not a bad thing.

If you were one of those gals who took a risk and shared, thank you. I know it can be hard to trust someone else with your pain, but I'm glad you took a risk on me. It's totally cornball, I know, but your story has now become a stone laid down along my path to healing.

At Night

It's a double-edged sword.

I'm a night owl; have been for as long as I can remember. I much prefer watching the moon trace its route across the sky to a bleary-eyed sunrise over the ocean. I like the silence and the stillness of the darkness; the peace that comes at the close of a long day. It feels like a long, relaxed sigh. But it's a double-edged sword, because in the silence, the sadness emerges from where it hides during daylight hours. And that's hard. The quiet stillness used to be my friend, but now it's something different. It's the bearer of tears that I should probably cry but would rather just hold in. It's uncomfortable. Almost unwelcome. Yet it comes every day without fail, just like for me, the memories of Logan's last few weeks return like a flood to inundate me with regret.

It's July. I know that's an obvious observation, but July is rife with meaning for us because the final day of the month marks Logan's sixth birthday. The one he mapped out for us before his last hospital admission. The one that he wanted to celebrate with lunch at Outback, dinner at Chuck E. Cheese, a chocolate Cars cake, a pinata and blue sprinkles. I never got to ask him precisely what he wanted to do with said sprinkles; I just knew that they were on the list. So when the 31st arrives, we'll do and have those things. Even if my heart should completely shatter, we'll do and have those things. Because he wanted them.

I haven't written much because my thoughts are painfully --frustratingly-- disjointed. When I start writing, I'm never sure where my mind will go, or whether I'll even be able to hold a thought long enough to make it make sense to myself (much less anyone else).

I'm not in a horrible place. No, some days, I feel almost good. When Abby, Isaac and Brady --I can't say 'the kids' anymore; no, I have to name them because 'the kids' will forever include Logan, even though he's not here-- are well-behaved and cute and in good moods, I feel like life could be 'right' again some day. But then the moment fades and I remember that my life will never be 'right' ever again. It'll never be okay that Logan isn't here. It'll never be okay that he was taken from us. That doesn't make life unlivable or without purpose; it just makes it... hard. Chore-like. Passable at times. Even happy at times. But never truly okay. And I know that eventually, I have to be okay with that.

I haven't said much about God. It's a sore spot, despite my previous assertions to the contrary. I think it's impossible --right now-- for me to not blame God for what happened. It's impossible for me to not feel a sense of betrayal so deep and so sharp that it takes away my breath. I don't understand God. I don't understand the way the world works. I still don't believe that He wanted this to happen to our family or that He planned it. No, suggest that to me and you'll still receive a written (or if you're lucky, in-person) tongue-lashing.

Still, it breaks my heart to know that I poured my entire existence into praying for healing yet it didn't matter in the end. I can't explain that. So I push God --and at times, the very notion of God-- away. It's a silly thing to do, really, because all I want is proof that Heaven is real and that Logan is there. At my core, I long for proof that I don't --and probably can't-- have. After all, I believed Logan would be well and a physical part of our family for a long time to come, yet he died anyway. I had faith. And it wasn't rewarded. And amid the racket from people who are well-meaning but truly have no idea what they're talking about, I have no idea where to go from here. Not a clue.

And so I roll with the waves. I get up every morning and go about the business of the daylight hours. Then after the sun sets and Adam turns in and the house is silent, I think and I cry and I hope for something. For proof that he's still out there, even if I can't see him now.