Time

Saturday Mornings

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saturday-706914_1280aSaturday mornings…they are my favorite. The work week is over except not in my case because social media does not ever close for business so neither do I.  A load of clients, deadlines and another project handed to me when I think I am seeing the end of the tunnel fills my day. Then there is the fact that I should have said,”No” and am kicking myself right into my favorite day of the week. I am hopeful that Sunday is a day of rest. That’s what God said it should be.

But still Saturday’s are quieter. They have this standing of, I am here, you can do something different kind of spot on the calendar. I like that.

As I started my coffee this morning, my stomach grumbled and I walked over to the refrigerator and opened it. Grocery shopping has been on the to do list, but I haven’t left the house in days due to that work schedule thing.  The refrigerator is pretty much empty.

On a shelf, all by itself, sits my takeout leftovers from dinner last night. As I opened the container and took a bite, I had a flashback of Saturday mornings years ago. The years where I was mom with sleeping children in their beds and always some kind of leftover to partake in the refrigerator. All the years of pizza leftovers are on my mind. Pizza is a fine cuisine fresh out of the oven or bagged in the refrigerator a day later.  Pizza was Riley’s favorite meal and cold pizza with some ranch dressing on the side would be a usual breakfast during his teen years.

It was a score for me to get a piece of leftover pizza before the masses of human beings that inhabited my home got out of bed. I was usually the first one up on a Saturday morning to inhale the quiet before the storm of live breathing humans that would soon rustle about in my home. A “Mom, I want…”, “Mom, can I?”, “Mom, will you?” was on the horizon. I could count on it.

Today, this Saturday morning, my cabin is silent with only a tick of a clock, the sound of an old ceiling fan making its rounds, round and round and the sound of me typing on my computer’s keyboard. It will stay just this quiet all day long with no looming rustle of awakened souls coming any minute. I miss the anticipation.

The warmth of family around you is something to embrace as some day the nest becomes empty. That scenario is one we parents know will be coming. What I didn’t know is one of those souls from my family would be gone from my life here on earth. That soul that was a light in every one of my days is no more. That soul that was a part of my world is gone.

As my computer powers up each day and Riley’s face stares back at me, I think, how could he be gone? How could this have happened? I tell him so as I see him looking back at me. Oh, how I miss him being a part of my Saturdays. I miss him being here to worry about, think about and care for. I miss fighting over the leftover pizza with him

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Riley must have thought it couldn’t happen. Riley must have thought this will be cool – that it was something to tell his friends he had done. He was celebrating his birthday. It didn’t end up to be a celebration, but a nightmare that he couldn’t get out of.

On this Saturday, the memory of Riley grabbing leftover pizza from the fridge while looking for the homemade ranch dressing with sleep tousled hair, barefoot in boxers and a t-shirt, causes my lips to curl in a smile as my heart aches with pain at the same time. That is what happens most times I think of Riley.

Don’t mess with drugs. It’s just not worth it.

I hate drugs!

 

I Love You, Riley.

 

Time

/ djuanadreed / Leave a comment

clock-331174_640Harvey MacKay said, “Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can send it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.”

Time stood still when Riley died. I didn’t know what day it was for the first month. I was in such a task mode at first.  I dragged myself out of bed, showered and moved forward. The funeral plans kept me moving.  Then the funeral was over and I feared what was next. What was next was  pain that had gotten larger. The ache inside me got to a new level. I wondered how I would be able to  function but I did function. I cried. I wiped my tears and moved slowly across my day. Each step is heavy. This grief thing is like carrying a heavy load. There is no getting it off your back. It’s always there.

Two and a half months later, I think time is my enemy. The pain is becoming stronger with time. How much worse can it get I wonder. It hits me out of the blue. A Riley memory happens, the pain floods through me and then poors out. One evening I was looking for a picture that my daughter asked me to send her.  I came across a file on my computer of pictures from a Thanksgiving a few years ago that I hadn’t seen in a long time. There was Riley…. younger, his hair not even touching his shoulders with his arm around me smiling at the camera. I broke out in tears. I couldn’t stop crying. You know the swollen eyes, snot stuffed up in your nose you can’t breath kinda hard cry?  It was one of those cries. It’s the realization that hits. He is not here. He will not be here. He is gone forever.

When I open my Facebook page and see my cover photo of him in one of his senior pictures that was taken only two weeks before he died, I ache to touch his face. It  makes me so pickin’ mad that he won’t be looking at me again with a Riley grin. It is so real now that I won’t ever touch him again. I don’t want it to be real. I was hoping it wasn’t. I kept hoping I would wake up and he was back. If its only been this amount of time and it hurts this bad, how much worse can it get? 

The pain of losing your child has to be the worst pain anyone ever has to go through. I am sure of it I’m angry that this happened, just really really angry. My sweet baby boy had a life ahead. Taken from him by a drug. A pill. The culture we live in promises drugs are cool. Smoking pot is the norm among teens today. Teens of all peer groups smoke pot-legal or not, they smoke it. Why not go for a different high and see what that is like?  How about mix a few drugs and see what happens? It’s cool right? No, its not. No, its not when the drug causes harm to yourself or someone else. It can end a life. Riley’s story is not rare. It happens. Too often it has happened. It can and does happen by that one try.  I HATE DRUGS.

How can I get this message out? How can we make sure that the risk is known that every time a drug is smoked, snorted, inhaled, or swallowed death can occur? Time is defined as “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.”  There is no continued progress of existence or events  for Riley. Time for me as a parent exists, but it is skewed to a point that I don’t know how to exist and progress without my son. Riley lost time forever by one decision to try a drug. Tell Riley’s story to the young and the old in your life. Tell it to the neighbors, the relatives, coworkers and the teens you know. Educate yourselves on the synthetic drugs that are out there being sold by online labs to dealers who don’t give a crap what’s in it or the outcome of its use. Talk to your kids.

I Love You, Riley.