What It Feels Like

I can't tell you how many times I've had people ask me "What does it feel like to loose a child?" and my inability to give a direct and satisfactory answer has always eaten away at me.

Last night I was watching a television show where someone's son was shot and killed. I immediately started to sob and Dave just looked at me and quietly shook his head. I know this is an overreaction to someone "acting the part" of death, but for me, it feels just the same. The line between imaginary and real life are forever blurred when it comes to the death of a loved on, ANY loved one.

Here's my explanation of "how it feels". 

The first feeling I remember is a numbness starting in my chest, the area where my heart used to be, and spreading throughout my body, my mind and my brain. I feel as though I could have been shot with a bullet straight through my heart and I wouldn't have felt a thing. I feel empty ... hollow ... like the shell of a person I used to know and perhaps even someone I used to be. I cry ... a lot ... like every time I think of my son's face.  I am afraid a little more each day that there will come a day where I will not remember what he looked like. How his smile used to light up his eyes and brighten my heart and quicken my step. Danny was my first love. He was an extension of me, like I was the electrical outlet and he was the lamp you would plug into the outlet to get the light you needed to see you through your day. A sob catches in my throat even as I write about my dear, sweet, gentle Danny. 

How can I explain to you the unexplainable?? What do you do with your basket of regrets, those things you wish you'd done differently, after the person is gone? Dead??  I do not walk or run away from those regrets. Instead, I use them to help me do better with the children who remain behind, here on earth, with their dad and I.  I accept them as a part of my life, among the rest of my self-inflicted wounds, and allow them to sharpen the vision and intensify the hope of the Great Day that is coming, when we will all see on another again, and I can then say "I'm sorry" to my son.

Nothing new can happen between Danny and I now. Everything that was to have happened, will never happen. The things that I waited for I will never get to see.  Danny will never get married, nor will I ever have grandchildren by him.  Danny will not be present at either of his sister's weddings, but neither will he be present when we bury his grandparents. For all that I believe, I believe this truly and wholly: the death of a child is wrong. We were not meant to outlive our children, but our children were designed and meant to outlive us. 

"There's a hole in the world now. In the place where he was, there's just nothing. A center, like no other, of memory and hope and love and affection which once inhabited the world is gone. Only a gap remains. There's nobody now who saw just what he saw, knows what he knew, remembers what he remembered or loved what he loved. A person, a irreplaceable person, is gone. The world is emptier. Only a hole remains, a gap, never to be filled."  Nicholas Wolterstorff in "Lament For A Son"

This best explains how I feel about Danny's death. Each person has an "inscape", a specific shape and core being that belongs to only them. Once that person is gone, no one will ever again fill that "inscape" exactly. Oh, someone may come along who fills the little toe and perhaps the space where the elbow would be, but will not fill the rest of that person's inscape. Another may come along who fills the entire foot space and maybe even a leg, but will never fill the entire inscape of the person who is gone and whom we long for.

Danny is dead. I still cry frequently and ask God to forgive me for my tears. Do I really need forgiveness for declaring a pain so openly that God allowed to happen in my life? Probably not. I will say that I feel immeasurably better when I feel God's hand on my life and when I allow God's loving hand to pump my heart until it can begin to beat again on it's own.

I miss Danny. Not just sometimes and not always in big ways. I miss him every day. I miss his contagious laugh. I miss his beautiful eyes that always crinkled up when he smiled. I miss his heart-searching discussions with me on every topic conceivable. I miss him. I am ok with that. Now I just need to continue "living life" and trying to find my new normal. As does my family. For that is what it, in fact, is. A new normal that does NOT include Danny in it. And that makes me, mostly, incredibly, undeniably sad.