It’ll be three weeks tomorrow. Three weeks ago was your last day alive. I wonder about that day. I like to imagine you walked your dogs and took in all the beauty and smells of the walking trails on your last day. But I don’t know what your day was like. You called me that evening. The words we spoke will be the last words I have from you for the rest of my living days. I knew you were struggling that night. But I thought I had cheered you up a little bit and you seemed like you would be OK. I told you to text me as soon as you woke up. You said you would. But you didn’t. I guess in one way, I am glad you didn’t txt me, because I would have missed that call or txt as my phone is usually set to silent through the night. I don’t think I would have survived that day had I discovered you reached out at the very end, and I didn’t answer your call. I still don’t know how I’m going to survive. I feel like I’m living in pergatory: in between two worlds. I want to be with you, where you are. And I want to be here with your brothers and your sister. I don’t know how to live this way. Somedays: in some moments, I have the urge to lay down and just join you. I’m told that is a normal part of the grief process. But, I will grieve you for as long as I live. How, is this any way to live?
You have given me a few ” gifts” since you left: just little things so I know you are still around me. Whether it’s a song I’m not overly familiar that I wake up singing, as if you whispered it into my ear as I slept, or an image on the TV that was something I would never have noticed except that it was exactly like the tattoo on your arm. Im getting that same tattoo by the way in remembrance of you. The dance of the dragon fly over our heads at the cottage was spectacular as I scattered the small packet of your ashes that I asked be held back from your burial. I just know, as we all did, that you were there with us as the sun was setting on that day.
My grief is a mothers grief. It is deep. And it is raw. Yet…it is beautiful in someways because it reflects the love I have in my heart for you. I only pray that what is left of my natural life is short and sweet. Maybe I won’t feel that in the months to come. But I feel it now as I walk through this pergatory.
I love you Sam.
For the Love of Sam 