Author: Lenii Wolf

I walk with my little guy, he is about to turn 1 soon. His blonde hair and blue eyes just about make it seem as if I kidnapped the little boy. He looks nothing like me, or the twins but has a lot in common with his oldest Brother Ryan. Next to that, he is all dad. Scottish, Irish, and tough as can be. “Aww, how adorable. Is he your only child? How many kids do you have? How old is your oldest?…”

‘Hmm, I have teen twins…(silently I debate in my head how to answer within a split second, but I never know how), they are 13. My oldest would be 19 but he died a couple of months ago…(and there, I said it again).” People don’t know how to respond. Neither do I though. It must really be a shitty situation having to hear this without expecting it. I feel bad when I don’t mention Ryan, yet awkward for my opponent when I do. He is, was my first born. The boy is, was real, took (and still does) take up space, time, everything a child should, in my world. He is, was my child. Ryan is, will always be my child.

How long will this last though? The constant is/was debate in my head drives me bananas. It’s not like I mention him to get pity, or sympathy. Maybe a little? Because I have realized fast that as soon as you get somebodies sympathy you feel like a little drop of oil just smoothed out a rough spot, kinda like Aloe on a sunburn. People feeling for you while in such pain really makes a big difference. There is a sudden sympathy from a stranger that can literally change and shift the entire day- or maybe hour/s, cause boom- there comes another hit reminding you of the ‘oh, wait, no, he still is not coming home. I feel this is the hardest thing about being a bereaved parent. For an instance everything seems ‘normal’, almost as if you have forgotten that he is not here and then you are being reminded that he will physically stay away – forever. The persons sudden care though however, there is something comforting about it.

The day we had Ryan’s Ceremony of Life, so many people from Germany, my (and Ryan’s) Motherland had messaged me to find out what time it would take place. Germany is 6 hours ahead of us, here in North Carolina (EST). So many friends, family, acquaintances stood awake Sunday in the very late evening, since we didn’t start until 4pm. They thought of us. They lifted us up in prayer, and in thought. I felt held, carried, cared for and deeply loved and this feeling really helped me through a lot of the entire day, and first weeks.

But you don’t ever drop this from your life, your experience, and hopefully no one will ever expect you to. I will always have four kids in my heart. I have carried, labored, and delivered four children. As a mother, I feel it is my right to mention my dead child every time someone asks, because it is part of me. Part of my story. It may not be cool to some, and who knows, it might not be like this forever. I learn more and more that the way I deal with missing Ryan, grieving, it changes daily. It is never the same. Who knows when, but the day will possibly come where I will respond to this question with: “I have teen twins.” But that’s just written in the stars.

As for now, I will unapologetically say his name. It affects me, my emotional, mental, and physical health. Ryan’s death has shifted me and changed my mothering, my being, the way I feel about myself and everything my life contains and consists of. I am grateful for him to chose me as mother, and for him to allow me to be side by side with him for 19 years and 5 weeks. I was his one and only constant for his entire life span. I will say his name for as long as I want. I had four children, now I have three. But Ryan, my little King, He made me Mama. For this I will be forever grateful.

It’s raining out…just a wet, gray and gloomy morning. As I am sitting here at the tiny table in my little cozy, creative, corner, looking out the window in front of me, a memory comes to mind.

The kitchen window I am sitting at is facing our front yard. This is where our big garden used to be. At the bottom, right in front of our rabbit barn we would typically plant corn.

I recall this one specific morning from a few years back: As I shut the door from the twins getting on the bus for school, I holler at Ryan “Hey Ryan, are you aware of your time?” like every morning. He had half a dozen alarms set, all different kinds of songs, to be sure he wouldn’t miss the bus to get to school, 1.5 hrs after the twins. Usually, I would get a sleepy “yeah” back. This morning, there was silence. I proceed to knock on his door. He was a hard sleeper, obviously. I knock,”Ryan, goooood morning”…nothing. So I opened the door to find nothing but a glorious mess in the room. The kid wasn’t there. I got sick to my stomach and wasn’t sure what to think of it. He snuck out at night and didn’t come home. ‘I hope nothing happened, I hope the kids’ alright…WTF Ryan?!’

So I called the police, I mean, what else should a worried mother do? I haven’t seen my kid since 8 pm, who knows by now what all could have happened. I paced the dining room, the kitchen, the living room while telling the lady on the other line my dilemma…the kid’s gone. As I am making it out to the front porch, while still talking to the 911 responder, I scan our garden – just to find Ryan in between the corn, looking at me from behind all kinds of green. Hiding. I look at him dead in the eye, making hand waving motion for him to come up. He slowly did. “I screwed up, mom. I fell asleep on my friends couch.” Is what he got out. As I continue to explain to the lady what just happened, the police showed up in our driveway. I hung up the phone, greeted them and asked kindly if they could take my son to school, after he washed his face and brushed his teeth, please. Ryan was mind blown, not happy, saying he hasn’t missed the bus yet, he still had time. “Nah, kid! This is your ride this morning,” pointing at the lovely county sheriffs white shining suv in our drive way. OH THE JOY, I got out of this. Well, the sheriff gave Ryan a way to school and I continued on with my morning, after finally letting go of the anger and frustration my son just brought upon me. This, never happened again…:D

Today, with Ryan being dead, I would go through this again. I kid you not. I’d take all these damn teen struggles back. Still, there is a realization today, I feel. I look out my window and see him standing there, behind the corn -that’s not there anymore, in the garden, that’s not there anymore. Still,I can see all of it, and him. And he is there, here.

Lately I’ve been thinking my feelings and emotions have been shut off. There has been so much I have been focusing on. I am functioning, functioning with intent, but I haven’t felt Ryan to the extent I did in the first weeks. Nowadays, there are times where I literally feel him within me. Every time I look at a picture of him for example, he is here. But when going about my day and focusing on the rest of my sweet pack, he has been distant. Living with a constant sadness that has filled the void in my heart, I understand I can feel joy and be happy too, just like he would want me too. But the ‘being here’ of a person that moved on to the spirit world doesn’t always look and feel the same. My lesson lately has pointed me in different directions. Music. A word. A landmark. Whatever it may be.

The other day I was driving by myself. It’s been hard for me to turn up the radio and jam out – which is typically my most favorite thing about driving. Since loosing Ryan however, I haven’t been able to listen to loud music and even found myself having the radio turned down, to where I drive in silence often. That said evening, it was so. Driving in silence, it was dark and rainy. I didn’t even think about it, when my hand just turned up the radio. There it was. Simple man, by Lynyrd Skynyrd. When he was younger, we talked about this song being our mother- son dance on his wedding day. No, I was blatantly stating that this is what I want, hehe. You know, like a mother sometimes does. The song was on and I listened to it. It was beautiful. It was this moment I realized I don’t have to feel him with me constantly. Suddenly it dawned on me, all the little things that some see as coincidences, maybe, these little signs everywhere are showing that he actually is everywhere. He is in the song. He is in the Ryan muffin we get as treats sometimes. He is in the Burrito blanket he wore wrapped around him all day, every day, when he came out of his room. He is in bus 103 that stops one road down now since Ryan isn’t getting on anymore. And he is currently still standing there in front of the rabbit barn, looking at me, up here in my kitchen. I got so excited and filled with joy, because suddenly I understood the phrase ‘He is always with you’ and ‘He is always here’ from an entire different view. Again, I let the limitations created by mind and society limit my perceptions. I found myself breaking out of something, whatever that may be. He is here. I truly believe the soul is multidimensional. So while he can be here in a song, he could be walking the halls in his school at the same time, next to causing goosebumps on a family members skin on another continent, and while doing that, he could be journeying the path given to his soul currently. With Ryan appearing in front of me in so many different ways, while it is up to me how I look at it, none the less- My son is here. With me, All. The. Time. So for today, my conclusion is: If we limit our mind to thinking our loved ones are only here when we consciously feel them in us or with us, we miss so many other times, situations, incidents they are actually here, showing themselves to us, just not how we would expect. Expectations make things seem like they need to be linear and turn out how we want them to. In some way. Well, none of anything is linear, especially life, and grief. It is really messy, like anything can sometimes be, but if I can let go of the expectations and just notice, a whole new world opens up for me. And Ryan, he is always here. ALWAYS.

It’s been four months today. It seems forever long since I last saw Ryan. On the other side, I look at his pictures and he is right here. I can feel and hear him close. “I gotchu, mom!”

I’ve been working on trying to figure out certain things. One day I will have to let go so Ryan’s soul can be where it needs to be… the next mission it is being placed on. But what does this letting go mean for me on this side, the physical side? It already seems like he’s constantly slipping through my fingers.

These last four months feel like a bad dream, as if he was drafted into a war. I wouldn’t know where he is, couldn’t get a hold of him, wouldn’t know if he came back but surely I’d have hope for it. The thing is, then I would fear for his life, constantly. Today I sit here and have come to the conclusion that there is no worry, anymore. No fear. In my current state of mind, heart, and soul, the feeling of worry for him is gone. Do you know the feeling of lying awake, wondering what your ‘wet behind the ears- know it all- adult’-child is doing? Are they safe, drunk, high, in a fight,… are they in trouble, breaking the law,…? Where are they right now? While it is and was one thing to let a teenager grow into a young adult, no matter the tools you placed in their hands, to hopefully make good choices, take actions towards good karma vs. the bad. Once they are out on their own we can’t protect them any more. We can’t constantly be on their tails to correct behaviors, or certain moves they chose to make. We can’t fix sh!t. We have to let them go…let them go to make their own experiences, learn additional levels of cause and effect…

How do you let a loved one go though, someone moving on from this life- not just into adolescences, or moving out of state. Regardless of age: 19, 42, 60,70,80…if we keep holding on, can they really move on to what the journey of their soul is destined to do?

Does letting go mean forgetting them? Distancing myself? I really don’t think this anymore, actually. What does it mean? Truly, I wonder if letting go just doesn’t mean what we interpret it to be, here, earth side.

What if it doesn’t mean forgetting them, maybe it doesn’t mean we need to let the distance grow in between ‘us’. Maybe it doesn’t mean necessarily being without them, especially not forgetting them.

What if it means something like shifting our conditioned thought, the dictionary definition of what relationship is defined as in words, in language, in person: The kinship, or the “state of affairs existing between those having relations or dealings”.

What if we learn to feel them more, rather holding on to the thought of needing to hear their voice, or being able to touch them – isn’t this what we do when they are in the back of our heads anyways? It’s just a different way, more sense-less… Or, we learn to understand that seeing them in a physical body is not really required to love them and have a ‘relationship’ with them? What if we nurture our memories with our loved one by talking to them (I like doing this in the car while driving by myself- nowadays nobody can tell if you’re on the phone or simply talking to yourself), about them, holding space because they did exist, they did have their physical space…What if we understand that we don’t know everything, we don’t see everything, and mostly, we definitely aren’t everything?! What if, where our loved ones are, regardless of the age when they moved on from Mama Earth, there really is no age and we are holding on to all these weird things thought and society find essential, to not forgetting someone? All this conditioning, so many ‘what if’s’…

Today I make a conscious choice. I make the choice to turn off societies noise. The expectations society has on how a person has to grief or move forward, or on. Don’t ever, please(!) tell a grieving person to ‘move on’, let alone to ‘get over it’. We will all one day deal with grief of losing a dear soul, be it human, animal, or even drastic changes of life altering situations …if we haven’t yet. No matter our individual belief when it comes to the after life, every person has their own timeline, (mostly no timeline), and ways of grieving. And it is definitely not linear. Likewise, no other can tell what is right or wrong to work through this agonizing pain, and all the feels… let alone how long it should take.

But if you wish, simply be there, here, sometimes all we need is someone that wants to just sit and listen, or maybe sit in silence with us, or to share a chocolate brownie with, or a doobie. Sometimes we don’t need advice or a hug and being alone is all the medicine. That’s okay too, though. To each their own…

Today I chose to hold space for my own ways of grieving, for myself, alongside my loved ones whom have moved on and are trying to move on, like my Mama and Ryan.

We have to let go, let go of thought and learn how to feel and create something different, something that doesn’t need words. Something that doesn’t need explained or heard. Something that works for us, individually. Something our heart and soul feel is the right thing. But we have to let go…We must let go of the fear of the unknown, what’s to come without them. There isn’t really a without them for as long as we tell their stories…

I must learn to let go while keeping him close, alive, by holding his space. Holding Space for Ryan- and myself, as his mother, a bereaved mother, a mother of three more kids, simply a mother, simply myself!

“Amid the noise and haste…”

~Max Ehrmann, Desiderata