52 with a few more to go

May 8, 2017 / djuanadreed / Leave a comment

The reality of my age has hit hard this year. I just had a birthday and all of a sudden I am feeling weathered, withered, creaky with a swooshy brain. Parts of me have been creaking for a while now, but it’s just this new number that even sounds old. Recently when I complained about some strange symptom I had, my boyfriend said, “It’s because we are old.” Notice he says “we” as if that is going to lighten the shock of the statement. It doesn’t. He can be old. I don’t want to be old! I am not ashamed of the years I have lived, 52, or the year I was born, 1965. I just don’t like that old part. I mean, I don’t want to be.

Riley just had a birthday this past week on May 3rd. He would have been 21 years old. That day is a double whammy of a day since it is also the day that he died. It has been three years now. Nothing is different. It still hurts. It hurts bad.

The day before Riley’s birthday when I felt like I was holding my breath waiting for the day to be here and wishing it wasn’t coming, Tom was making dinner and I was standing in the kitchen keeping him company. We began talking about that being old thing again. He said he would go back ten years if he could- that it sounded good.

I said, “I wouldn’t because that would mean I might have to live ten years longer.” There, I said it out loud and then my tears leaked out.

Dealing with this pain, this grief that I am sentenced to for the rest of my life is real. To carry it longer sounds awful and too taxing. It’s a lot of work. I don’t know that I can do it any longer than the time that I have ahead of me now. Death is a welcome thought.

There is an end to it. I know that my friends that are carrying the grief of losing a child understand. There is a finish line I look forward to when the pain will stop and better yet, I will be with Riley again. It is a white line with flags and I do not fear crossing it.

To survive this grief of losing a child, I must put one foot in front of the other and keep moving. I must! Or I will surely wither away.

I get up, I get dressed and I keep moving because I have a life to live right now. After 3 years, I can smile at a joke. I can appreciate the beauty of my blue sky and green grass and blooming flowers here in Kentucky. I can feel challenged with my job and the pleasure of seeing the results of my efforts at it. I am thrilled with how my children are doing and how fast my grand-daughter is growing.

I sleep, I eat, I dance in the kitchen, I love and I am loved. I cry and I wipe my tears and I keep going. I bury my head under the pillow and I rest. My heart hurts so bad when I think about him that it feels that it is going to quit. I keep going anyways. I must!

I have made it 52 years, I can make it 48 more years if that is what God gives me, but don’t ask me to do one more day than I am destined to. Riley had only 18 years. I’d easily give him all of my years, but I can’t. This is my life sentence – this grief. And I will handle the withering, weathering, creaking with a swooshing brain avoiding the word, “old” the best I can and I will keep getting up and keep moving…Because I must!

I Love You, Riley.

Tiny Hands that Hold my Heart

December 12, 2016December 12, 2016 / djuanadreed / Leave a comment

My heart is full when I am with my granddaughter. At 10 months, she isn’t still unless she is in my lap while I read her a book or while she is drinking her bottle. Her tiny hands are soft, touching and reaching for things. Her eyes light up with wonder at things around her. You can see her mind twirling as she touches her Dad’s socked feet and in return, he makes a funny sound. She looks back at him and stares quizacally. She uses her tiny hands to throw a tennis ball and then crawls after it to do it again. Everything she picks up goes straight to her mouth. She puts her tiny hands down to move quickly across the floor with an army crawl that Braden also did as a baby.

To watch her kick her feet smiling and reaching for her Daddy whenever he enters the room, makes my heart swell. She loves her Daddy. She has him wrapped around her tiny finger. Just as it should be.

I savored every moment with her and Braden when I visited them both a month ago. Every moment with someone I love is precious since Riley died. You don’t realize the depth of time and experiences with someone until they are gone. I will not have even one more second with Riley and that hurts beyond measure.

Braylin Riley is a happy baby. I cannot help from believe it is because, in some crazy way, that she has Riley’s name in her name. Riley was a happy baby too.

On my wrist, I wear Riley’s WWRD (What Would Riley Do) bracelet every day. It never comes off. I hand bracelets out when I tell Riley’s story. His bracelets are on the wrists of many people of all ages. The bracelets represent hope to me. Hope that whoever has one will remember Riley’s story, will repeat the story of how he died on a first try of a drug and that they themselves will not try or continue to use drugs.

Each time that I held Braylin as I gave her a bottle, she played with the bracelet putting her fingers under it, pulling on it, twisting it around my wrist over and over with her tiny hands. Watching her play with the bracelet caused me to weep the first time it happened.

Braylin Riley was touching Riley and his memory. She won’t ever have the privilege of knowing him. I believe she would have loved him like we all do. I think she would have been drawn to his smile and warmth like we all were. I am sad to know that she won’t ever have the chance to know her Uncle Riley though I know she will know of him.

I hope that Braylin will never come into contact with drugs. Reality is that she probably will. I fear what society will be like at that point when she will have to make the decision of trying a drug or not. I can’t worry about that today. We are far from that point. What I can do is savor the fact that Braylin is drawn to Riley’s bracelet as she plays with it with her tiny hands. She will see it there each time she sees me. She will play with the bracelet on her Daddy’s wrist, touch one on Aunt Bria’s wrist and tug on Grandpa Peterson’s too.

IMG_5272-XL Riley is here with us every day reminding us what life is and should be. His story reminds us how quickly without notice, life can be taken away by one decision. I miss my boy so very much. I am thankful there are tiny hands that touch a bracelet that reminds me of him and his unconditional love. Those tiny hands touch and hold my heart.

I love you, Riley.

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Clean Sheets

September 27, 2014 / djuanadreed / Leave a comment

One week from today I am hitting the road and moving to Kentucky. I have purchased my very own log cabin in the woods to write in. As I get ready to leave, I am savoring the heat of Arizona summer and the convenience of McDonald’s french fries being a hop, skip and a step away. There’s a list of things, relationships, feelings, smells, sights I have soaked in as I know it all changes soon. I am a third generation native of Arizona and this is all I know. I picked a place that holds new and different experiences ahead. I am up for the challenge! Yet while I am here, I have had some hard tasks.

One of those is going through Riley’s pictures, school projects and papers that I had saved over the years. There have been many smiles as I pull things from boxes and files. Like this one which I absolutely love!

I also feel the sadness of seeing pictures of Riley as a baby and realizing at the moment the picture was taken, there was a promise of a life that would last to an old age. I counted on that. I assumed it. I dreamed of what his life would be like. I smile when I see the ‘I love you’s’ written to me from him over the years. From preschool age to 17, there are notes and messages telling me what I say to him daily.

If that hasn’t been hard enough, cleaning his room for the last time took a big toll on me. I finished it yesterday. Alot of tears have been shed in the last 48 hours being in that room. Alot of talking to Riley has happened. Mostly I tell him to please come back and that he should be here. In the last almost 5 months since he died, I have taken naps on his bed and laid there hugging his pillows. I have stood in the middle of the room and looked around for long periods of time absorbing the feel of his space and how he made it that. You can see what he loved in the space of his bedroom.

Now it was time to clean it up. The first task was to strip the bed and wash the sheets and comforter. His smell is gone now. I had buried my head in his pillows and cried over the past months. Now the sheets and comforter have a clean smell to them. That’s a familiar smell too but still, the last time he laid in that bed is gone. There were still dirty towels and the shorts he wore that night on the floor. I washed those too. It felt like a goodbye as I put them in the washer.

On his dresser there were tuxedo shirt buttons that I missed when I returned his choir outfits in May. Many times I had gathered those and made sure he had them for a choir concert. There were pens, pencils, concert stubs, receipts and a lot of dust. There was a receipt for dinner where he had taken his girlfriend on prom night only a week before he died and a short Golfland pencil that he had used to keep score when they went goofy golfing after prom. There were guitar picks sat on shelves, his desk and by his bed. Loose change, empty glasses, school passes and broken sunglasses. I picked these things up and organized them in a cup of change, a cup of pencils and pens. I threw away things like the broken sunglasses though even that was hard since they had touched his face at one time. He started wearing this exact style of sunglasses at a very young age! Look what I found!

I also found a treasure in a shoe box in Riley’s closet. His WWF wrestlers had been safely tucked away. Oh how Riley and his best friend, Ryan loved everything to do with WWF. He had a plastic wrestling ring and a pretend champion belt. I heard, “Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!” in my head as I held the plastic figures in my hand. I can picture Riley’s joy and I’m up to something grin as he and Ryan were running up and down the stairs playing and doing little boy things. We did have to keep an eye on those two!

The things that I have collected from his room to take with me remind me of parts of him. His gray and purple Vans that used to sit at the bottom of the stairs, an ASU sweatshirt I bought him to remind him of my alma mater knowing he was going to go to NAU. I have a guitar pick, books, his tuba mouthpiece, a rock he had saved along with all kinds of random tiny small things that were held by him at one point in time that will surely bring a smile and a tear to my eye in the days, months, years to come. I can pull them out when I need them. I have this sense of did I get everything I want to take with me? How do I pick the physical things that represent Riley as I leave? Did I get what I need? I’m not sure. The most precious and important things are in my head. That goes with me wherever I go.

As I finished dusting and vacuuming Riley’s room for the very last time with the sad realization that he is not going to come home and mess it all up, I stood back, looked at the clean space in front of me, cried a little more then took a deep breath. One step in front of the other! Just one step at a time is all that is needed. That I can do.

I Love You, Riley.

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Belonging To “The Riley Group!”

August 31, 2014 / djuanadreed / Leave a comment

I just woke up to a dark room. I took an accidental nap on the couch. There are on purpose naps and there are I closed my eyes for a second naps that I would say are accidental. I woke up with an urge to start searching through some of Riley’s email and Facebook. I go in spurts where it seems doable to dive into Riley stuff and other times I cannot, so I don’t. I am trying to know what by looking? I am not sure. I am seeing things that were personal to Riley. Things I wouldn’t have seen ever if he wasn’t gone. There are moments while I look that I don’t think that I want to know. There are more moments I think I do want to know. I have had the privilege of knowing Riley better by the stories that have been told to me by random people about him. I am thankful to see him through their eyes.

I went way back in messages to 2009 and saw Riley as an 8th grader. I could hear his immature voice and the pre-teen thinking in what he wrote as a 13-year-old. He made a group called “The Riley Group!” He did that because I had found a Djuana page on Facebook and had found out there were other Djuana’s in the world. I know, hard to believe others are named Djuana but last I looked there were 33 of us. Riley messaged a bunch of people of all ages with the name Riley asking them if they wanted to join his group. No one joined. Dangit, I want to go back and make that endeavor successful for him. Why wasn’t I paying attention then and helping him make that group? Should I have been? I remember when he did it, he announced his plan to me. He even wrote on the page “‘my mom joined a group called the djana group so i decided to make a riley group, all Riley’s join the group!” He misspelled my name. (I’m smiling.)

While looking at his Facebook, I also came across his musician/band page made in 2013 called “I Got Lost” where he posted a recording of him playing “Black Bird” on his guitar. I cried listening to it. I could imagine his fingers on the strings with his head down while he played. We know he recorded other songs that he had written. We haven’t found where he downloaded them yet. I hope we can find them. It feels very important.

I happened to be in the choir room this last year when some of the students were performing for the class. Riley and another choir member sang a song. Riley played his guitar. I heard him, came out of the back room and stood in the back while I watched my boy sing and play for his peers. The choir teacher later told me she saw the pride and joy on my face as I listened. I am sure she did see that.

Riley was on the cusp of feeling more successes in life, in college and beyond. I wish he had lived to have seen those successes. I wish he hadn’t taken that pill. I hope he has heard the stories people have told of how knowing him changed their lives. How he made a difference for the girl who was contemplating suicide. I hope he knows how grateful that boy is that Riley took the time to befriend him. I hope that he is aware of how many lives he impacted. There’s a story by a girl who was in the hall crying. Though Riley didn’t know her, he went out of his way to distract her from whatever was making her cry. He said something random which is what he often did to get people’s attention. That created a conversation, her smiling and ultimately feeling better. My son, with a smile and a personality to match, had made people’s days where ever he went. He had 800 people who filled the church pouring into make shift seating at his funeral that would have belonged to “The Riley Group!”

I sat with a counselor this week and she told me grieving is a hard process. She said to give myself a break. That losing a child tops the list of losses. I get that. I know that. It must be the umbilical cord between us that is never really gone. The distance between us pulls me, yanks me, and holds me to him. I won’t ever let go.

I continue to wish that this is a bad nightmare and that I will wake up. Something tells me that 20 years from now I’m still going to be hoping, wishing, pleading to wake up. Oh, my sweet baby boy.

I Love You, Riley.

Rockabye Baby

July 28, 2014 / djuanadreed / Leave a comment

When Riley was a toddler he fell asleep in the oddest places. Being the third child he had to, I suppose. I was busy running around with two other children who had to be at grade school and preschool and be picked up at different times. Of course those pick up times were in the middle of Riley’s nap time. I drug him out for play dates, girl scouts and T-ball practices for the older two kids. I have a picture of him asleep on the stairs. He is sitting on one step with his head on the other sound asleep in his favorite Spiderman pajamas which he wore as much as possible day and night. I have another picture of him asleep in a plastic tub most likely he was playing in it, curled up and decided to snooze a bit. I even have a picture of him asleep on the toilet. It’s the cutest picture. He is in a baseball hat turned backwards, sleeveless t-shirt with his head cocked sideways fast asleep with his shorts down around his ankles. I’m not going to show you that one, but it’s a cute one!

Riley was my last baby. I went to Greg and said, “I want one more. I want a chubby blonde boy.” It’s exactly what I got too. I didn’t know you could order up exactly what you want when you have children, but we did. Bria looked like a baby doll with rose bud lips and big eyes. She was determined to not sleep when we wanted her to. Oh the things we did to try to get that child to sleep. Braden was sweet with a full head of hair. He had a ball in his hand as soon as he could hold one. He put himself to sleep when I put him down with no fuss. Braden survived big sister’s abuse. Bria was 2 1/2 and I found her picking him up as a newborn more than once trying to carry him off like a doll. I think maybe Braden in turn payed forward when Riley arrived. Riley was born with dark hair that turned blonde. Riley was cute as a button. He was just plain kissable. He came out smiling and he didn’t stop. I rocked him to sleep to an older age than the rest. I would whisper songs to him and rock. When the hustle and bustle of the day was over, I took the time to hold him as I watched him fall asleep. I savored that time we had together. I can still feel that time in the rocking chair holding him close as we rocked back and forth together.

I don’t have trouble sleeping like many people seem to experience as they are going through grief. Though the first night that he died, I did not sleep. It was the most awful, painful, draining day of my entire life. I wouldn’t relive that day again for a million bucks. I do know to be thankful for my hours of rest and sleep. It gives me a break from the ache that I feel. The problem is, I wake up and he’s still not here anymore. Waking up is not what it used to be before Riley died.

Riley and I had a ritual where I popped, rubbed and scratched his back before bed. When at 17, he was still asking as he was going to bed, “Mom will you rub my back?” I was surprised he was still asking. I can’t tell you how many times, I was in bed, had a headache or was in the middle of something when he asked. Yet if he found me awake and asked, I got up and did that for him. It was a long process and I couldn’t skip to just scratching his back or do it out of order. It was a time that we talked about nonsensical things to serious things. Teenagers, they are hard to pin down to talk to so ya gotta get those talks in when you can even when it is about an event of their day, what’s going on with a friend or something as deep as whether the Bible is literal. We hit on all kinds of subjects during that time.

I guess I did savor bedtime with Riley from infancy to very close to adulthood. I didn’t rub his back at 18. I missed it by a day. The last time I was sitting on his back rubbing it, I asked if he was going to miss this when he went away to college. He said “Yep, lower, no to the right- ya there.” Oh, how I miss my sweet baby boy.

I love you, Riley.