Reality strikes: My son is dead!

You don’t realize how comfortable you are in your new life until something so concrete reminds of the life — of the living child you used to have.

It may sound strange, but as we approach the two-year anniversary of Xavier's passing, I remember him not being here more than I remember his life before we lost him to brain cancer. Or at least lately I have subconsciously chosen to move forward with life and this newly forged relationship -- or continuing bond -- with my dead child. Sometimes its less painful to think of him as he is now, than to remember what it was like with him alive. Those memories remind me of what I am missing. They sting!

Xavier's drawing from 2015 after his first relapse.
I believe he knew then he was going to die.
So many hidden messages in this picture from him
rising up to the tiny rainbow. 

As I recently sorted through some files I came across his report cards, his drawings and all of his medical documents. They stopped me in my tracks. He did exist. He was once a living, breathing and achieving little boy. That breaks my heart.

I have been focused so much on this new relationship with a son out of this world that I distanced myself from the one that actually lived. And then the pain hits again. I relive it all again. He was here and now he is gone. And it hurts like a son of a bitch. When reality strikes, time has not lessened the pain.

This grief is a finicky thing. Just when you think it’s going good and you have reached acceptance in the so-called phases of grief, you come across something, anything or even a new experience that puts a part of your child’s life in a new perspective and you are taken under the water again. My words are simple but the emotions are not.

It will soon be the two year anniversary of his death. I have yet to even open his box of clothes. The ones he had already started packing for our move in 2017 that he never made with us. I wonder if I will ever be able to handle opening that box ... ripping open a wound that will never fully heal. Some things make him seem so real to me like his clothes that touched his body, that were once filled with his scent. I am even afraid to watch a video of him these days ... worried it might put me back in a very dark place. It hurts to remember, but I don’t want to forget.

I often wonder when I go through my local drive thru if the guy I always see wonders where one of my children went. Almost every day I would stop for coffee with the twins in the back and he would talk to them or make them smile. Then I stopped going. I never went for coffee and I never had either of my kids with me.

Then suddenly I start coming around again. He recognizes me. He is friendly and speaks to Mackenzie. Then day after day I am always with just one child. Does he ever wonder what happened to my boy? Does he ever ask himself where is the other twin? Maybe silly to think some random stranger who serves me coffee would notice I am minus one now, but to me that minus one is so huge. It’s such a big hole, a void that how can anyone not notice what’s missing!

Any bad day with Xavier was still better than even the best day without him.

I didn’t know or understand there could be anything worse than being a cancer mom but I know better now... it’s being a bereaved mom. I would give anything to have my little boy back, cancer and all, just to hold him in my arms one more time and kiss him goodnight on his soft warm cheeks. Perhaps it is selfish to wish him back in so much pain for my satisfaction, but I know he loved our cuddles just as much as me!