Welcome, guest blogger, Sandy!

The Missing Piece
By Sandra P.

For the first two years after my son Jason died, I wrote daily. Writing truly did save me. Heartache, pain, questions and grief, spilled all over countless pages. Without the ability to write all of the words I could not say aloud, I don’t know what would have happened to me.

After those two years, I gradually stopped writing and I’m not sure why. I still can’t read many of the raw, heartbroken words I wrote during those days. Since then, I’ve been able to write very little about anything – including my son. So maybe writing will help again. I desperately want it to help. I want to write myself into the next stage of my life. I want to write to continue to heal.

Right now, it just makes my heart hurt almost as much it did during those first months. My throat is tight. Tears are just below the spilling point. But it also feels somehow comforting, in spite of the hurt. It feels like I am connecting, just a little, once again with the son I love so deeply and miss so badly.

My heart still grieves for Jason; my firstborn. My arms ache to hold him again. I long to brush the hair out of his big, brown eyes and tell him how much I love him. I want to talk with him about all the things that only he and I cared so much about.

During the last eight years life has gone on, even though I’ve often wished it wouldn’t. I look back and feel almost as though the years since his death have been some sort of dream – or nightmare. Even though I’ve continued to function, to love and be present for my living sons, to work and earn a living, to smile, to pretend I am doing fine – I realize that my life is largely a façade. I am not who people see on the outside. I am not the easy going, relatively happy person people think I am.

Inside, I am still crushed. Now, much of the pain is a dull ache, instead of sharp, jagged and raw. There is a part of our family and a piece of my heart missing. And I am left with many more questions than answers.

I still pray but I no longer think I know much about God or His purposes. How could the God I’ve loved for so long have allowed this? Why wasn’t I a better mother? Why wasn’t his heart condition ever diagnosed? Why didn’t I try harder to make him go to a doctor? Why didn’t I see that something was wrong? He was an adult, but I am his mother. Mothers protect their children – always. And I failed. I did not protect him. I could not save him. Why why why?

All I’m left with are memories and questions that can never be answered. And, I just now realize, quite a bit of anger.