"Grief is the price we pay for love." I had no idea a price would be paid when Ian was born. We all fear the unthinkable happening but never do we actually expect it. Now my life is sliced in two. Life before with Ian and now life without him. I hear someone mentioning the year 2007, and my brain fires off like an automatic time stamp. Ian was alive then. He was seven or facebook memories pop up and right on cue Ian was alive then. He was ten. You didn't know what was coming. You look so strange and different. Who is that person?
Photos of my life before 2021 challenge me in unexpected ways. I look at the images and hardly recognized myself. Sometimes I feel shame seeing myself as some happy idiot. That may seem harsh, but grief makes you look at your entire life. Did somehow every choice and action lead to this point in time. How did the shadow of fentanyl find my son?
I have spent many minutes, hours and days contemplating this very question. It's not just the guilt of failing as a parent but of trying to find some kind of reconciliation and reprocessing of Ian's story and myself as his mother. It's a beautiful and complicated story where he was my teacher as well as my son. I feel he deserves my contemplation and his birth and death have changed me in ways I'm still discovering. This is the work of trauma and grief.
Writing in therapeutic and my sudden lift in mood is validation. It's true what is said about grief coming in waves. Sometimes it's crushing and other times gentle and peaceful. However, the most powerful and amazing thing about grief is it brings you to shore. Perhaps this blog is one shore of many waiting as I wander through it. I just hope to speak my truth and share my story. After all, grief feels better when seen. I feel Ian smiling now.
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