Today is Jason’s birthday. He would have been 43 years old, forever 19. I celebrate his life and the awesome person he was with great thankfulness in my heart that he was born into our family, all the while there is a huge ache in my heart and a hole in our family. I feel his loss so acutely on days like this, no more memories to be made, no celebrations to be had. You may say, “But it’s been 23 years!.” But to me it feels like yesterday on days like this, the loss acute, deep and fresh again. I miss you, my precious boy, and love you beyond earthly bonds. The world was so much the better with your presence, so much less so with your absence.
My husband and I moved from California to Washington State in 1981 to try to make a better life for our young family. At the time, our first child was not even 2 years old. We got tired of having notices in our water bill that we couldn’t give tap water to our child and were concerned about all of the smog alerts that the elderly and children shouldn’t be outside. We wanted clean air, clean water, clean living for our family.
We arrived in Washington State to make it our home on April 1, 1981. I loved it from the get-go. So much beauty, so many places to explore. Two of our children were born there. Our kids grew up, we explored our state, homeschooled our kids. So much living happened there. Jason loved Washington, died and is buried there. Of all the places we’ve lived, it has represented “home” to me.
All of that changed when Jason died.
Joe and I moved from Washington in mid-2006 and our daughter moved to Denver by that year end. Our oldest son and his family stayed in Washington and we have gone back to visit them over the years. Each time we were there, we stopped by to visit Jason’s grave, placed flowers on the grave stone. Because of increasing safety issues, high housing and small business costs, skyrocketed gas and living expenses, our son and his family are packing up and moving to another state by the middle of next month. Once they move, the strong ties we once had to Washington will be gone. Joe and I live all the way across the country now and I can’t imagine we will go back any more.
After Jason died, I visited the cemetery a lot. It was a place where I felt like I could be close to him, talk to him. As hard as it was to look at that grave stone and the finality it represented, there was a comfort in being close to my boy. It was a peaceful place, a place to sit or walk or cry or think.
It’s so strange to me that I feel so very, very sad and almost a panic at Jason being left behind with no one to be there for him. I can’t stand the fact that he will be alone, even though the friend who died in the same accident is buried very close. Who will take him flowers? Who will clean the grave stone? Who will remember?
Oh, my precious boy.
I know in my heart that he is not really there. I know he is waiting for me on the other side of that proverbial river we all must cross over someday when our time on this earth is over. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will see him again – really SEE him, HUG him – when this life for me is over. I long for that day. This life has not been easy for me since Jason died. It has been one of pain, emptiness, loneliness, struggles, disappointments.
Our older son promised me today that he will go to polish Jason’s stone one last time before they leave and will say goodbye. He, too, feels the enormity of leaving Jason behind. I will send him money to buy some flowers to put on the headstone for me.
Tears pour down my face as I write this. I feel like we are all abandoning Jason, leaving him behind and alone, and it tears at my heart and crushes me. I don’t think I’ve ever figured out a way to say goodbye to Jason, my precious boy. Life moves on and the shell of me that I now am keeps on trying to find some meaning and purpose in this life that has been left to me. I don’t feel like I have done or am doing it well.
Jason, you made everything better and brighter. You are always in my heart. I love you beyond what any words could possibly convey.
“And can it be that in a world so full and busy the loss of one creature makes a void so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of eternity can fill it up!”
— Charles Dickens
From my journal March 14, 2002:
“Jason’s gone. How can it be true? The most incredible guy I know. My precious boy. Sometimes I feel like one of those boxes you can fold open both sides so you can see right through. I’m an open box – an empty square with appendages. I wake up in the morning feeling like there’s pain filling my entire torso. It seeps to every part of my body. Sometimes I’m so weak I can hardly stand up or lift anything. I saw him. I know it’s real. I just can’t believe it. How do I go on without him? The sunshine in my day. The hugs, the sweet spirit.”
As I sat on the front porch in the sun this morning, I reflected back on the past twenty-two years since Jason died. All the places we have lived, all the ways I have tried to integrate his loss into my life, all the ways I have tried to be a person of whom he could be proud. It’s not an easy thing to do, this trying to figure out a way to keep on living after your child has died, to try to find something meaningful in the life that is left to you.
I’ve filled journals full of my thoughts and struggles. I’ve written this blog for years. We finally built a home we hoped would be a healing sanctuary. We’ve lived from one side of the country to the other and in between. I’ve taken up new hobbies. I’ve tried to develop a meaningful career. I’ve tried to make friends so we are not alone. I’ve tried to trust again.
I guess all have “helped” to some degree, if there is such a thing as “helping” a grieving parent. The journals gave me an outlet to say what we were going through when no one else wanted to hear or to be around us because our deep grief made them uncomfortable. I hope I have helped by writing this blog, given other parents an understanding that they are not alone. I’ve tried to live my life with integrity. I have not truly felt “at home” since Jason died. I love our little house. It suits us, but has been somewhat problematic from the get-go. It’s only been in the last few months I’ve begun to feel “at home.” Friendship has been somewhat elusive. I’ve trusted people, only to have them disappoint.
No matter what we do, grief never goes away. It ebbs and flows, sometimes strong, sometimes flowing under the surface. On days like today, the agony and emptiness is close at hand. Today, I am once again the empty box, an open box with appendages. I miss my boy. I miss the life we had. I miss the person I was.
We have a neighbor who has become a good friend. She is a widow with a cute little dog. My husband sometimes walks this dog for her. It gets Joe out of the house and provides some exercise, gets the dog some exercise, and gives our neighbor a break.
Earlier this week, when Joe texted our neighbor to see if the dog needed a walk, our neighbor texted back that something awful had happened, that a 17-year old good friend of two of her granddaughters had died in a car accident on her way to school. I had heard the waves of emergency vehicles that had gone past our development and knew something terrible had happened. It appears the young driver pulled out in front of a utility truck. She died instantly.
Joe read the text out loud to me when it came in. As he read the part about the girl dying in a car accident, he physically reacted as if something or someone had punched him hard in the stomach. He bent over, saying an agonized, “Oh, no!”
It’s astounding how something instantly can take you back so clearly to that moment in time when your own child died.
For me, when I heard the text message, I instantly went back in my mind to the day Jason died. It wasn’t something I did on purpose. My mind so clearly just took me back to that time.
We invited our neighbor over last night for pizza and to watch Groundhog Day with us. As Joe was picking up the pizzas, she asked about the night Jason died.
It’s been nearly 22 years. But, as I talked about that night, it was hard not to feel like I was reliving it all over again. I felt raw with pain, raw nerves making my insides quiver as I talked about that horrible time in our lives. It was like I was walking through that night and following days all over again. It wasn’t as intense as the actual time, of course, but it surprised me how deeply I reacted. No matter how much time has gone by, the grief is never far away, just under the surface ready to raise its head and stare you right in the face.
I intimately know a lot of what those parents are going through – not exactly, of course, but probably more than most people. I know the road ahead for them will be agonizing for them, their family and their friends for many, many years. Their lives will never be the same. My heart and prayers go out to them.
I learned to sew when I was quite young. I made a bright green button down shirt for my brother when he was in junior high because he asked me to. I made clothes for myself growing up, made my kids clothes when they were little. I sewed t-shirts to sell at the farmer’s market. I sewed a lot.
When Jason died, I felt like all of my creativity died with him. I no longer sewed. I no longer worked on photo scrapbooks. I no longer took photographs. I quit baking for the most part. Cooking was a chore. About the only thing I did was pour out my heart and hurt into journal after journal.
When we left Seattle, I sold my serger, gave away my sewing machine to a missionary group taking sewing machines to underprivileged countries. Amazingly, I kept scraps from clothes I had sewed over the years. A few years ago, my sister gave pieces of fabric from my mom’s and grandmother’s sewing over generations, along with pieces of fabric from of things she had made for our family. I have pieces of a dress I wore to my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary, pieces of my wedding dress made by my sister, pieces from a dress my daughter made for herself, pieces of pajamas I made for the kids. So many pieces. So many memories.
My original intention in starting to quilt was to make a memory quilt. I wanted to take those pieces of heritage fabric and incorporate it into a quilt with pieces of clothes I had saved that belonged to Jason. I chose to make the quilt by hand using the English Paper Piece method. I wanted to remember the people who wore the clothes those pieces represented as I stitched them together.
I was a little hesitant to start with, especially the finality of cutting everything in case I made mistakes. There’s no replacing those fabrics and the memories they hold. I decided to set it aside and get some new fabric and make a practice quilt for my granddaughter. If I made mistakes, I could always get more fabric.
I have to admit it took a long time to finish – years, as a matter of fact. Besides the fact that it’s a time-consuming way to make a twin size quilt (the cutting and making the shapes is a huge project by itself, each side of the hexagon took 20-25 stitches per side), we moved twice and had most everything in storage part of that time. I finally finished it earlier this year, afraid she had outgrown the pattern I had chosen. I held my breath as she opened it and had tried to prepare myself in case she didn’t like it. Fortunately, she loved it.
Since then, I have machine-sewed four other quilts, all using purchased fabrics. I have started working on my hand-sewn memory quilt again and hope to work on it more consistently after Christmas.
One thing I still cannot make myself do is cut up the clothes I kept that were Jason’s. Even after all these years, I can hardly look at them without crying. As I was organizing my fabric today, I stopped and stared for a while at the box that has his clothes in it. My heart still hurts so much when I think of him not being here. It amazes me in some way that I still can’t do anything with those clothes after all this time. It feels like I would be losing more of him, if that were possible.
This is not an easy time of year for me. Between the holidays and the time leading up to the anniversary of Jason’s death, I feel like I am on an emotional roller coaster and trying to avoid emotional land mines. I still miss Jason so much. My beautiful bright shiny wonderful boy.
I woke up this morning thinking of Jason’s birthday the year our stove/oven had been damaged by a kitchen cabinet that had fallen off the wall and hit the stove. Undeterred, we fired up the grill on the back porch, borrowed the griddle from the damaged stove to put on the grill and cooked breakfast out al fresco. I can still picture Jason with a big smile on his face as he flipped pancakes.
The thing about losing a child is that you no longer have the opportunity to make any more memories together, don’t have the opportunity to see them get married or have children, no longer get huge bear hugs, and so many other things that are missing. We have a Jason sized hole in our lives that never, ever goes away. On days like today, the huge magnitude of the things we have missed and lost mixes with the wonderful memories of having Jason in our lives. He made the world – my world – a better, happier place just by being in it…and I miss him with all my heart. I’m heartbroken. Our precious, wonderful, thoughtful, kind, intelligent, beautiful boy.
Recently, a friend who was approaching the fifth anniversary of his son’s death asked me if it ever got any better. I wish that I could have told him that it did. I told him that grief changes over time.
Grief ebbs and flows, but never goes away. Some days it’s a ways below the surface and doesn’t seem to show; some days it’s a gaping open pit I struggle not to fall into.
As I lay in bed last night, thinking about the significance of this day and how many years we have lived without our precious, wonderful Jason, it felt like my heart was breaking into so many pieces that it was turning into a pile of fine sand. Today I feel like I am moving in slow motion, my mind foggy as I struggle to think of what I need to do next.
We recently set up a small home gym in the garage. As we rearranged our storage boxes to make some room, I took the opportunity to organize the mementos in those boxes so that I can begin putting together some scrapbooks of my growing up years and those of the kids. It was an incredibly difficult thing to do. School projects, birthday cards, notes passed to a friend in class, pieces of paper with fingerpaint handprints of a small boy, drawings of a toddler with love notes to mom and dad, stories written by Jason about how he had met one of his best friends, poems about a dear friend and a girl he loved. Joe, who was helping me, kept saying from time to time, “It isn’t fair.” Again today, he said, “It isn’t fair.” No, it’s not fair. Such a wonderful young man, our precious boy, gone in an instant. For Jason, no college graduations, no weddings, no kids, no jobs, no more special events or holidays. For all of us, the memories and mementoes we have of Jason are all we will ever have. They all stopped March 3, 2002.
I wish I had some great insight, some great encouragement after walking this path for so many years, but I really don’t. I wish I could say that time heals all and that it gets better, but I can’t. The friend I mentioned earlier told me that I am an encouragement, but I’m not sure how I do that. I just try to live my life in such a way that would make Jason proud. As in the beginning, one day at a time. I look forward to the day I will see him again.
We love you and miss you, Jason. Every single day.
Grief: One Woman's Perspective 