pain

52 with a few more to go

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IMG_5083The 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.

A life that touches others goes on forever

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IMG_5340-2-3222307474-OA life that touches others goes on forever. I want desperately for Riley’s story to be instrumental in changing lives. We that knew him and loved him are forever touched by who he was. I speak and tell his story so others know Riley and his story.

Simply said, a grieving parent doesn’t want their child forgotten. That is natural. We want to talk about them and we don’t want you to be afraid to mention them.  I want you to remember my young boy that was going to rule the world some day dressed in a baseball cap, cowboy boots and red cape and the young man who liked to discuss how the world could be a better place to live. He shared his smile with strangers and friends alike. His story is important.

In December of last year, I gave a donation in Riley’s name to Isaiah House Treatment Center, a campus of two facilities totalling 88 beds – a men’s drug addiction treatment program located in a small rural town called Willisburg, Kentucky. I have had the privilege of working with Isaiah House for four months now. What I know about this place is that after my many years of researching drug addiction treatment centers all over the United States, I have never and I mean never, seen a rehabilitation center that covers addiction treatment like this place. They are a non profit organization that operates on a very tight budget to provide the largest amount of comprehensive services possible in order to ensure a lifetime of recovery for the men that come through their doors.

I asked to share Riley’s story with the men. I wanted them to know my son and his story.

As I set up the slide show of Riley and sat down, some of the guys started filing in finding seats. Since we were sitting face to face, waiting for my daughter, Bria and the rest of the men to come into the room, we started talking.  I don’t think they knew how much that helped me keep my nerves in check.

It had been awhile since I told Riley’s story. It’s never easy. It’s harder when I haven’t been doing it regularly. Visiting the memories of Riley dying is hard.

My imagination runs wild as I revisit the story. There is a visual picture in my head of the tab on his tongue in the snap chat he sent out. The smile on his face as he wrote what joy was like signing it, “acid”. The final hours of his life filled with terror, the cries for help that weren’t answered, the moments of him standing at the entry way of the front door with a gun under his chin. I don’t know how to tell the story without the details of how I lost my son. I HATE the details. I HATE drugs.

So what do you say to a group of adult men of all ages who know drugs very well, who could have died from drug use, but are still here sitting in front of you alive? I said the same thing I say to the kids in classrooms and school gyms. “You don’t know what you have in your hands. Please live. I want you to live.” I told the men I don’t want your Mom, Dad, grandparents, sisters, brothers, wives and children to feel the pain I feel every day. I relayed the message as not a warning of a first try of a drug, but of the possible consequences of one more use of a drug.

Those consequences happen in overdoses in mass numbers daily across the United States. The heroin epidemic is wiping out a generation. There are new synthetic drugs that are killing our sons and daughters as they hit the streets every time we turn around. There are too many parents that know the grief of losing a child to drug use. There are too many children in foster care because of losing their parents to drug use.

There were tears in the audience that mimicked mine as I spoke. At the end, the men had some kind and introspective comments about what they had heard Bria and I say. Each walked out with a “What Would Riley Do Bracelet” and I had accomplished telling Riley’s story one more time.

From there, they take Riley’s story with them and I will never know how it effected each one, but I know I shared it with the purpose that his story sticks with them.

The game room at Isaiah House is named Riley’s Game Room now. The Game Room has a television, an arcade game, ping-pong table, pool table, gaming system and guitars in it. Riley’s kind of room! It’s a great room to have Riley’s name on it.

Because A life that touches others goes on forever.

I Love You, Riley.

The Small Notebook

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IMG_1134There are moments that make you smile and moments that make you cry when you are a grieving mother. It is how it is. Some weeks more tears come than smiles. Some weeks you can keep the tears at bay. In reflection, you can instantly feel guilty that you were okay that week.

I reached into my nightstand drawer to jot down a “To Do”. You know, one of those things that you remember and then forget unless you write it down. This time I was going to have something in front of me to make sure I did the “To Do” instead of losing it in the mix of my busy mind juggling days. Out I pulled a small notebook that I hadn’t looked inside of in a very long time. I had forgotten what was inside until I opened it. Well, that won’t do to write a note in, I thought. I dug some more, found something available to write on and jotted my ‘To Do’ down.

Later, when I went back into my bedroom, I saw the notebook still sitting on top of my nightstand. I opened it and smiled. I had forgotten I had done this. I had put this little notebook aside many years ago- stuffed in drawers and boxes and yet there it was-still in tact. A moment of smiles had just crossed my path. Now, do I want to read further?

It is a tiny journal I kept that I wrote to the kids in as they grew.

When they were tiny, I wrote on their calendars of all their milestones and then some. First smiles, first words, rolling over, standing up and when their first tooth appeared. I wrote notes to them telling them what they were like at that age. Later I moved over to writing it down somewhere else. This was one of those somewhere elses.

Inside a photo of me, young and smiling, was placed between the pages. Look at me! I thought. There aren’t as many pictures of me since I was always the one behind the camera. Wonderful memories emerged as I leafed through the notebook. Memories I didn’t remember as well- small intricate details of their accomplishments, fits they threw, where we went, what we did.

Bria was and still is such a character. She was my first live doll. My first project as a mother. We didn’t have a car. We were together all day every day. Braden was Bria’s first live doll. I would catch her trying to lift him up to hold him without my help or put her plastic doll’s bottle in his mouth. I was amazed that he instinctively knew the sound to make as he pushed a toy car across the floor. He slept and ate with a basketball and was trying to fix and take things apart at a very young age.

Then in May of 1996, I wrote: Riley is Here!

And the curves of my smile turned downward and a lump in my throat developed. I read through it. I smiled as the memories popped out from the pages. Remembering my sweet baby boy despite the lump and rapid heart beat happening at the same time.  He was a joy from the start who was always smiling. He was an easy baby. He made our family complete.

Smiles, tears, anger, broken heart, the joy of having him in my life for 18 years, the pain that he is not here anymore….those are the emotions that come and go in moments. Facing the emotions are important to keep yourself healthy when you are grieving. Tears cleanse. Tears wipe us out. Smiles give us a break. Smiles give our hearts a jump start. Smiles can make us cry again.

All of the emotions are here to stay til the day that I die. I wouldn’t have any of them unless I loved him with all of my heart. That I do.

 

 

I Love You, Riley.

 

 

Broken Dishes

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I walked to the cabinet, picked up a wine glass, walked out the back door and slammed it as hard as I could to the ground. I screamed out loud.  I crouched down, hugged my knees and rocked back and forth while I cried. I stood up, walked back to the cabinet, picked a plate and threw that one down. I kept at it for a while. Crying, marching back to the cabinet, tossing dishes onto the concrete and watching them shatter into pieces. The quiet of the night, the noise of the bugs in the dark interrupted with crashes of glass and ceramic as the broken pieces spread across my back porch.

Little shards hit my ankles as the dishes broke. If I had gotten cut I would have welcomed it. I much rather feel the pain on the outside. If it’s on the outside you bandage it and it heals. It is hard to find relief when the pain is on the inside. I was looking for a bandage by breaking something. I needed to let it out. 

I am angry. I am sad. I am hurt. I am lonely. I have no control. I have no freaking control! Anger is like a poison. I don’t like how it stews and burns on the inside of me.  It’s prickly with sharp edges. It eats up the good. It taints my days. I need a punching bag to punch. I don’t have one though I’m thinking it might need to be on my next shopping list next to dishes.

I chose breaking dishes on the hard concrete to let the anger out. Oh I picked which dishes and I counted to make sure I had at least 4 of each before I walked back outside. (I’m practical even in my anger.) It helped. I feel a little better. It helps to see it all broken and scattered on the concrete this morning. The pain is visible in a way and I am in no hurry to clean it up.

My grief stretches wider than the death of my son though that makes me very angry at times. It is a broken marriage of half of my lifetime. A broken family. I lay under a bus that I threw myself under to shield and protect. There is loss of family and friends. The home that I ran and took care of, where my kids grew up in is on the market to be sold. Riley’s organ is at the dump buried under someone else’s garbage. A 400 lb albatross that didn’t work yet it was one of Riley’s prized possessions. If only I had been asked first. If only I had a chance to find it a home before it got pushed off the back of a truck. I have no control.

Those broken dishes that lay on the ground represent my grief in more than one area of my life. Eventually I will pick up the pieces, sweep it up and bag it. I want to throw away the anger with the broken dishes. I want peace. I need peace of some sort as I sift through my life. If only I could live in a cocoon.

Like a butterfly emerges from a cocoon, I have to believe despite what life brings, that I can fly above it all. I want to look forward not backwards. Can the grief of losing a child have its place in our lives without it taking over and ruining us? I believe so.

With grief comes anger, hurt, pain. I will carry Riley with me in my  heart forever.  I will mourn for him and miss him until the day that I die. I will get over these other circumstances that have created anger. I have accepted that Riley is gone. I can’t bring him back.  I will continue to tell Riley’s story in hope that his story saves a life.

Harboring anger has eaten me up inside. I cannot walk barefoot in my freshly cut grass that I proudly mowed myself because it is now laden with broken glass. My advice is: Don’t hold it in. Let it out. The longer you hold the bitter emotions in, the bigger it will fester. Cry if you need to cry. Scream and yell at the wall if you need to. Kick something. Stomp like a 2 yr old having a temper tantrum.  Do what you need to do to release it.  Save the dishes if you can.

Circumstances that make me hurt and angry will come and go. The control that I do have is to take care of myself by constructively releasing the anger before all I have are paper plates.

I Love You, Riley.

 

The Stark Reality of Grief

/ djuanadreed / 2 Comments

filename-1 (1)2Grief is individual. I am alone in this. Some people may not understand that statement. Unfortunately those who have lost a child do understand it. It is a lonely walk with many people standing all around me waiting to hug, help, ease my pain, yet I cannot receive help on this matter.  There is no way I can help you understand what it is like. If you do understand, I am sorry.

I carried Riley in my womb for 9 months. Attached by an umbilical cord he grew within me.  While he was growing, I ate the right foods, slept, and was careful to take care of myself in order to grow a healthy baby boy. When I pushed him out into this world, he took a breath and cried. I nursed him. I woke to his cry at night. I rocked him for hours upon hours. I slept with him in my arms.

Riley is and will forever be a part of me. Often I imagine him in my arms, cradling him tightly as I fall asleep. At 17, he towered over me in height and size. I couldn’t pick him up anymore. He picked me up off my feet and held me instead. With the loss of Riley on this earth there is an empty crater that will remain empty. The loss of Riley is felt by many. Their grief is their own.

He was a part of me as I was a part of him. Being a boy, he wanted to be like his Dad. He was so much like his Dad. He and his sister were like a comedy routine together jousting back and forth with words and phrases that sometimes only they understood. He and his brother were bound together as brothers. This was apparent when irritating each other in their bunk beds at night or when they were ganging up on their big sister. He will always be with us in our hearts. We will always cry for him.

The stark reality of how individual grief is has hit me hard. Since the day that he died, I have been waiting to grieve with the other half of him, his adult brother and sister yet it has not happened like I ached for it. They must walk this walk the way they need to. Their grief is individual. There is no right or wrong. There are stages. There are ups and downs.  They will find their own solace and their own way of handling their pain. The memories that make me smile don’t always make them smile, but make them cry instead. The photos that warm me can’t be shared with a sure feeling that they will receive them in a moment they can handle the memory. I wait to be held by someone who feels it like I feel it, but it doesn’t come. There is not anyone that feels my loss like I do.

Family and friends consistently try. They ask, “What can I do for you?” My answer is always, “Nothing.” I can’t think of anything that might make me feel better. It is an empty hole, an ache that grips and runs rampant through my whole body. My heart aches, hurts, pounds like it is reaching out for him and then my heart feels lifeless within me. I cannot reach him. He is gone.

As I sat alone in my apartment the day after the funeral waiting for the promised call to come be with family that never came, I realized I was on my own. There, in that moment, I started to realize I must get through this for Riley.  Without my youngest son on this earth, I can still get up, stand up and keep moving as hard as it is sometimes.  I can make my way through this maze of pain, of loss, of a changed life. I can hold on to my love for him. I can fight for other teen’s lives. I can fight for mine.

Riley tried LSD for the first time on his 18th birthday. He was about to graduate from high school. He was accepted to Northern Arizona University. He was in love with a girl who loved him back. He could be found almost every day of the week at Coffee Rush sitting with old friends or making new ones. The LSD was bought online by the dealer who was a peer of his. Riley thought he had bought a certain amount, the tab was loaded with so much LSD that the medical examiner said he had not seen that high of an amount in one body in the 30 years of doing his job. In the horrors at the end of his acid trip, Riley took a gun and shot himself.  In an unconscious pull of a trigger, my baby boy was gone.

Riley had consequences that he never considered. It was his choice to try a drug. My motivation to tell Riley’s story in my grief is that teens hear the message which is It can happen. It is absolutely not worth the try. Riley lost a future of experiences, milestones and memories for both of us. As I walk this walk, I will continue to tell his story in hope that it will be shared to help turn a teen away from risking the fate Riley suffered. Life is precious…….. even the grieving kind.

I Love You, Riley.

It’s Snowing!

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IMG_5585It is snowing. There was no grace period. One day it was sunny and working outside weather and the next it is cold and I am scrambling to layer up to stay warm. I am sitting by the window watching this light fluffy white stuff float down and stick to the ground. The green grass is slowly turning white. I will have to take Bert out in it today. Bert came out of Pennsylvania as a pure bred Bouvier puppy. He hasn’t seen snow since he was 8 weeks old. He is 6 now. He was definitely hot in Arizona always looking for cold spots on the tile to lay. With his furry coat, he is equipped to be in the snow.  Already as the weather has changed to cold, he has been out in the yard laying in it when I am bundled up shivering. As I get acclimated to the cold and wonder if I am going to be able to handle being cold, he seems to be saying, “Finally I am comfortable, bring it on. ”

I have never started over in a new place before. I am not comfortable yet. I wonder how long it will take til I am for I know this is where I should be. I am very uncomfortable when I think of Riley. For me, time is not something that makes the pain less. I cry more. I ache for him more. I work harder at diverting my thoughts to get through those moments, minutes, hours, days of pain. I am not very good at diverting right now.

Too often these days I wake up and immediately start to cry. Riley is now in my dreams. He hadn’t reached them yet until now. I see him walking into a room with his soft blonde hair flowing as he moves. I see his face with that grin he had. I hear people patting him on the back and chatting with him. He looks at me with that twinkle in his eye. I can almost smell him. I hug him in my dreams and feel his soft skin. We have short conversations like we did, like he is still here. It feels so good to see, hear and touch him. It is like it should be. Just like it was. I wake and only reality is here with me. He is not here anymore. And it hurts. It hurts real bad. It is a stabbing ache of an empty space without him.

I love my boy with all of my heart, well what is left of my heart. There is a chunk of my heart gone now. I hold that stuffed dog which was not a favorite stuffed animal of his. It is just a soft dog that I bought him one year that sat on a shelf for years. I grabbed it and kept it with me because it was something to hold when I am sad and missing him. I have a broken leather belt loop that I hold too, a guitar pick, a rock he had saved sits by my sink with the other rocks the kids had gathered and given me over the years. Two of the rocks are naturally shaped like hearts. Handed to me by my children as a treasure found. I hold the rocks randomly. I pass Riley’s picture, touch it and tell him that I love him. Sometimes I wail and cry hard. Sometimes I cry softly letting the tears fall down my cheeks.

As I watch my news-feed on Facebook, I see more stories of young adults who have died from drugs. I feel for their parents. I know the pain and anger that they feel. My sweet baby boy is gone and each day it gets harder. My strength decreases with time. My stamina deteriorates and I wonder how I will survive the loss of my son. Even when I declare that I will survive, there are moments I don’t care if I do. Then I remember this happened for a reason and I will make the most of this tragedy to help others. I must.

IMG_5555As Bert digs his nose in the snow trying to figure out what this fluffy white stuff is, I dig my nose in to figure out life without my son. This experience is not fluffy or white, it is hard, dark and just plain unwanted. I had no grace period. One day Riley was here and the next he was not. I do not think, Bring it on! I think, Can’t we go back? One step at a time, I go on. One stinking step at a time.

I will continue to share Riley’s story in hope that his story will steer a person in a different direction then to try drugs. Riley was a good kid that made a bad decision. That’s usually how it begins.

I love you, Riley.