18. Jan, 2022
Twelve weeks - 90 days
Today just after 17:00 you died... suddenly ... alone and in the rain. Quietly you passed from this world into the next. Sometimes I wonder: "Is there a next? Did we not just believe it to make death easier?" Heaven feels real far today and so do you Liam.
I was supposed to go first, I am the old sickly one. You made such a difference to this world in the 13 years you lived on Earth. "I Lived" -from OneRepublic was your memorial song, but every word in that song, is how you saw the world and you lived by it. Your bar to live and bring joy was exceptionally high for someone so young as you. I miss that energy and liveliness and joy in our house. Now it is just quiet and not joyful. It is accepting the inevitable fact that you died.
At the moment I am just breathing, hour on hour, day by day. I get up, I get dressed, I go to work and I do my chores. I am not feeling joy. I am not at the space where the memories of you are filling me with gladness. Not at all, every memory, toy, sock or photo sends me into a downward spiral of misery and deep sorrow. I know how it is to be powerless and not being able to get rid of the pain.
Pain of losing a child never goes away and in fact speaking to people who have lost young children tell you that it gets worse over time for a long while. That it is because the missing is so much worse.
People who lose a child I have noticed just breathe for a long, long time before memories are looked at in fondness. But they all hide the pain. The pain - there are no words in any language I think that can explain the non-stop pain, like a piece of you is ripped out and a big cataclysmic black hole appears filled with very dark thoughts. I wear all black on days like today, filled with this pain that drenches every single cell of my being.
I want to scream, throw a tantrum (vloermoer) and punch something until I break something or me. I will rather take the physical pain than this!
I am grateful that I could have known my Liam for 13 years and I knew him very well because he was "my person", like Raine is my husband's "person". Our souls just connected immediately. I love both my boys equally, but Liam got me. Raine gets his father, he thinks his mother is so dramatic. I am grateful for all the joy Liam brought every where he went, how he taught me to be authentically me and stand up for stuff I believe in. I miss seeing that daily. Now I have to dig into a suitcase filled with memories of Liam from friends, teachers and family given to us at various memorials. Then... then I remember and then the sadness comes back in full force.
Today is a black day! And it is another rainy day like 19 October 2021. Tomorrow is the date anniversary and we always now do a new tradition of sending sky lanterns into the air. Tomorrow will be 3 lanterns... We also visit the sport where Liam died, where my husband planted a cross. The I remember that day, seeing your lifeless body lying there cold, blue and wet.
Today I feel that it will NEVER get better for me.