There’s no damn timeline

Grief is forever.

You get that yet. I am still trying to accept this myself. Today is the 11th anniversary of Xavier’s tumour diagnosis and I am still crying at the thought of us rushing him to McMaster hospital for emergency brain surgery.

Some years this day and those that follow go by without a thought. Other years like 2021, it is a painful time of remembrance.

I picture my sweet little baby laying on an operating table for 12 hours. His tiny fingers and toes limp with anesthesia under bright surgical lights. That moment I last kissed his soft round head before it was cut apart.

The trauma lives within me.

Xavier has been gone almost four years now and over a decade since his diagnosis. But I still grieve. I grieve the day that changed our family’s life forever. I grieve the life he should have lived had he not had cancer and the life my daughter, his twin should have lived.

Maybe it’s PTSD but I can still feel the pain and the fear of this day 11 years ago. I can’t help but put myself back in that hospital watching the doctors poke and prod my baby before he disappeared into the back hallways for a preop MRI.

I won’t apologize for my tears and I don’t need sympathy. I need to grieve and I need to cry. I need to remember my son - even when those memories hurt.

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The Book of Me

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