I haven’t posted in a few weeks. Last month rolled through and rampaged my life, just as I had expected it to. My birthday, Beckett’s birthday, and the Children’s Hospital Courage Classic all came within a two week period during the sizzling month of July, and I was left a little staggered. Now that some time has passed, I am coming out of my daze.

One good thing that was gained from this deeply emotional month was lots of inspiration for and reflection on my life, which continues onward without Beckett. The long marathon of parental grief stretches before me and I find myself contemplating it as often as ever. My pathway as a parent to both a living child and one that has left our world casts interesting concepts and questions throughout my brain as I go along. Recently I was considering how normal my fears as a mom continue to be. I am like every other paranoid guardian. Obsessing over cold symptoms on the internet when my little one starts up a cough. Worrying that chemicals in my kids food are poisoning her. But where I used to be able to coddle those terrors with thoughts like “don’t be silly,” I am now empty. The darkest of motherly fears actually manifested in my home. The worst did happen to me. I am learning, learning always. And this lesson is in the literal unfairness that exists and must be accepted about the world. At least it must be accepted by me if I am not going to shatter from the inside out.

Yes, the world is unfair and nothing I do will grab it by the tail and force it to square up with me. How do I know? Because there is no exchange worthy, no price or reward, that rectifies the loss of my son. No other child will ever replace the one that was lost. And no circumstance can put the lost one back beside me to know and raise here in this life. It can’t be made right. I would ask any parent that has not lost a child who is reading this to take a moment to really understand that sentence and acknowledge it. If you are a mother or father yourself, I am certain you would agree that each and every member of your family is an individual that you love separately of others. So I hope you realize that because of that, I do not want to be told that “everything happens for a reason,” that “God just needed another angel,” or that what happened was “a blessing in disguise.” There will never be a purpose big enough to justify the loss of my sweet boy. Loss parents have read this paragraph with no need to stop and consider its truth. They live it every day of their lives.

My husband and I discuss future children and we both make small comments about the fear of another pregnancy. Now coupled with the normal concerns of any person deciding to grow their family is the god-awful genuine experience of a circumstance like that. Birth defects, miscarriages, and other horror stories in whispered conversations and internet forums are now historical events where I am concerned. Sometimes as I take the trash out, grocery shop, or do something else remarkably normal, I have this actual thought: “I can’t believe this is my life.” Coupled with living through the moments of last year, I am also more exposed to scary information than ever before. Those “crazy, one in a million” stories of tragedy are now people on my friends list. I do not seek, but instead constantly stumble upon new knowledge of horror as the community I now belong to fills in around me. These last six months I have been told many a story that left my mind reeling with thoughts like “I didn’t know that could happen!” “That poor family!” I say, and it takes me a split second to remember that the same kind of loss took place in mine. “That happened to you dummy.” I end up thinking.

So all that being said, am I the most stressed out I have ever been? A careening assemblage of paranoia barely holding on? Surprisingly, no. Beckett has taught me actual peace. It was the hardest lesson to learn. But he blew the lid off my fear tank. When what you are scared of comes to pass, you have learned that actually, you can exist beyond it. It will hurt, in every second, but now you will more clearly see those seconds. Because of Beckett, I understand the waste in being consumed by fear. I was just that, and often, during his development and his lifetime. That time spent on anxiety amounted to nothing, even when the danger came and engulfed us. I continue to stand here. It is not so much that I am unafraid now. Truly, I am terrified. I am scared of my daughter driving a car one day, alongside half-wits behind the wheel at every intersection, and of some day in the future sitting in an ultrasound room looking for development markers in baby number three. What I actually mean is that when my mind races about scary things, I am now comforted by an ever present fact in my life. That death must be considered. That it is sure and that it is coming. What is there to fear when I always know that?

Don’t read this and worry for me. Don’t see its darkness. See instead that while my heart is broken in to pieces, these pieces are more full than ever before. I am humming with the energy of all the beauty that surrounds me, that surrounds us all. I hope you are enjoying it, all that goodness. We are like tender blossoms adrift in the sea, gasping to remain afloat. At each waves mercy, and under constant threat of being pulled under. We are so afraid of what we cannot see below the surface. I have come to be at peace with the bobbing. Happy to see the sky still, but okay with the realization that I cannot hold any sway over the force that surrounds me. So many blossoms with so little time. Time I can’t spend on fretting. I want to spend it on love.

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