#5

I get caught up scrolling through my pictures. There is one album dedicated to Ryan where I have collected all snapshots I have found and have been sent from different people from all over Germany, Florida, Pennsylvania,…

But when I look through my own pictures I realize for a very, very long time it was always just us. Ryan and I, 19 years. He basically taught me how to be Mama, next to what I have learned from my Mama with my 10 year younger sister. I am an unmothered mother.

Ryan is basically my teacher from his 19 years of life. Funny how we think this works. While someone dies we realize, how much they taught us. If it wasn’t for him I am not sure what could have influenced my decision and choice making more, than becoming pregnant the first time. And here we are today, I am supposed to learn something again, cause that’s the pattern. I am supposed to learn from Ryan, his death. But what?

OK, there is the fact that this life can be over in an instant, like, right now, I could just drop dead. No kidding. Next, there is a legacy to uphold. A story to continue, just a little different maybe? Somehow there is also a rekindled drive of becoming the best version of myself. His death lit some kind of fire in me. And while I have been having many good and happy days along this new road plastered in grief, today is heavy. But it’s good. I like it. I feel comfort in the weight and dark. It’s a lingering sadness covering me like a veil – elegant, black tulle draped over my head- And I let in, or not, whomever I chose.

The days carrying the most weight are usually the ones after I spoke about the End to his Story. From when the police knocked on my door at 3 am until today. The unfinished business of seeking justice for my boy. I like talking about it and sharing it, and I embrace the days of heaviness immensely. Listening to my body, my mind and soul seems to be the good-est thing to do for me, during that said time…usually with a disgusting amount of chocolate available to my needs.

When you lose your child you hurt so badly, it can’t be described. There are no words for it. There is just feeling and emotion and a lingering pain in the bones and the heart. It doesn’t go away but it get’s easier to carry. We adapt to it, grow around it, fill our life around the traumatic event and move forward. One step at a time. Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day….we fill our blank pages of our own story with memories, laughter, sadness, and the life now. The forever changed life. The “After Ryan died”. Grief stays. For as long as we love, grief stays. Grief is the love we hold – from the other side, the physical side. Not related to a person perse, but relating to having and not having something suddenly.

Carl Jung (Jungian here :)) said it so wonderfully; “Embrace your grief. For there, your souls will grow.” I have been journaling about how I process and take the time to Hold Space. The really cool thing about journaling for me is, I find solutions and progress in so many ways that I am realizing how much more it means to embrace grief. The growth it brings with it when actually holding the space for your loved one instead of pushing it away, avoiding the conversation, making everything disappear, is immeasurable. My understanding and belief in death itself has shifted because of certain experiences and encounters I have made and am still making.

Embracing my grief is not letting myself fall in a hole I can’t return from. It is merely working with what I am being made open to. Picking through what I am being made aware of and knowing I wont find it if I’m searching too hard or ignoring the signs. I need to take it when it comes and flow with it, or let it flow. Whatever it decides to do with me at any given point.

And my soul is growing. I am okay-ish, or something like it. Something within me tells me, for as long as I love my child, for as long as I speak of and to him, for as long as I let myself feel all the feels without shame or preconditioned resentment towards death, I am okay because I am holding the space. Holding Space will keep us forever close. Really we are never separated because every single time I think of Ryan, my heart feels his closeness. But Missing him is always the hardest part. Missing him always, in person…cause for the longest time, it was always us.

And I scroll through my pictures, and it was always us…and he is here, and here I cry, I love, I remember…and once again, I will sit with it and feel my sons love from the other side…like on so many other days.