Waves

Sent from my iPad

On Oct 29, 2011, at 9:00 PM, Erin Motto wrote:

Having been on this journey of grief I decided to look up the popular "stages of grief" just to see where I was. I found myself viewing the stages as platforms that I would strive to somehow get myself to the next "stage." I strived to get to the next stage like we do when we are playing a good game. It is everything to us and we cant wait to get back to it in order to pass it. I asked my counselor how to speed up this process and move on with it. However, it has become clear after my research and my own experience that "getting over it" is not a linear motion. It is fluid, like the vast ocean moving with waves. Waves that are going in and out of anger, questioning, disbelief.....just when I think I have arrived to "acceptance," a wave knocks me off my feet into the tragedy all over again.
I think my problem with the word "acceptance" is that I equate it to perfection. I will be perfect when I arrive to this platform. I will have no more sadness or grief....I will be able to be like "all those other people" who can get up on stage and talk about their tragedy like nothing. The reality is, I never want to be "those people" because I want to be real, breathing, and tenderly cry for my son. The tears are a tribute to a child who is not with me.....the remembrance is giving homage to my lineage. Besides, who says pain has to be bad? I loved this quote (that I'm stealing off of Facebook)...."grief isn't wrong. There's such a thing as good grief. Just ask Charlie Brown." I get it Charlie, I do!

Family of five

Today I finally got some physical representation of my son! I have struggled so much with the fact that my son isn't here physically but he is so much of who I am (just as all of our kids and loved ones). We don't have a picture of him hanging on our wall, he isn't in our Christmas photos, and I don't hear his footsteps coming down the hall. But again he is apart of my family. I have had so much guilt that everything that has to do with him is in a box at the top of my closet. My closet!!! It just isn't right.
But now I have him next to my heart. No one has to know about it or ask, it's just for me. He is now physically apart of me. If they do ask....MarKay already has....I can tell them and, it is what it is......I feared how I would feel when the necklace with his name and birthdate arrived in the mail. Would it feel like the anniversary of his death or his due date? Would I be able to put it on or would it be too hard? I slowly opened the box anxiously and was shocked at my reaction. The feeling I had was absolute pride. It was the moment when you say to yourself, "that's my boy!". I was surprisingly overjoyed and wanted to show the world like you would a super cute photo. I'm beaming even now just telling you about it. Over the last few hours of wearing my son it is clear that I am riding a wave of acceptance right now. I've decided to enjoy the ride.

Sent from my iPad

Trying for a boy.......

Ok don't get excited.....there is an explanation for the title of this blog.

I have been quite surprised how often I am getting this question.

Poor unsuspecting people see my two girls and ask if we are going to

give it that one last shot and try for a boy. I'm quite thrown off

because I have had a boy. Then it dawns on me....my son will always

be apart of me and he exists in my family but there is no physical

representation of him. No one else can see him or even knows about

him. But from my perspective, he is the single most impacting event

in my life. So the question is, how do I answer this question? Poor

unsuspecting people are not prepared for me to unleash my dead son's

story on them but if I don't mention him I feel that I'm ignoring his

existence. I guess there isn't a solution to this, just another unknown piece to this life puzzle.

Rats

The other day I ended up watching Hoarders, the animal episode. I rarely choose to watch Hoarders because I'm disturbed by it deeply. I don't know what it is but I can't fathom how someone can live in the mess. The episode I saw was about a guy who lived in his house and welcomed rats as his pets. He didn't have a ton of stuff in his house but he fed and housed at least a thousand rats. They were crawling in the walls, in every room and perhaps the most disturbing, in the mattress where he slept. He never cleaned up their feces or urine and really didn't mind it. He loved the rats, they were his friend, his everything. As the therapist was going through the house she was processing everything with him. She knew he had an unhealthy strong attachment to the rats. She brought to his attention that he had lost his wife and found her dead in a traumatic way. She said that he never had dealt with this pain and he was using the rats to cover up or replace the affection he would no longer be able to give his wife. This episode has stuck with me. I had been so judge mental of this man and how he could possibly let his life get to be this way. I mean rats.....the filthiest thing you can think of.....in your bed!?! Unreal. Or is it?

Reflecting on my life, I have rats too. They take a different form. There are things/pain that I don't want to deal with, things I mask. Things I have lived with for so long, I call them friend. I sleep with these thoughts as they nestle themselves in my mattress or crawl up on my pillow. More importantly than that, they are so hard to get rid of that they manifest themselves and multiply to where they take over. I think I have never seen this or noticed it because I was so used to living with them. Then one day, when my life changed forever, I saw them. Going through and "cleaning house" has been hard work and so painful. Taking off "the mask" has left some open wounds and vulnerable emotions. There are vacant and lonely holes in the walls where they used to reside. The stench and soiled stains are still there. You may be asking, what are my rats? They are a lot of things.....self doubt, fear, anger, bitterness, shame, pride, and many more. Who knows, there might be some even now that I can't see but one day will.

Another huge impact this particular episode left on me is the fact that they got most of the rats out by exposing them to light. The rats hid and flourished in the darkness but were rendered ineffective in the light. Wow this is so true for us. What is the light? The light is truth. I'm not really all those things I believe about myself, but I have kept them in the darkness and have let it take residence in my life. As hard as it is, I want to expose it, show light to them and rid myself of the lies. I want you to see my rat infested house so that I'm not in the darkness giving power to the filth. Yet in such a strange way, those thoughts are my friends, I love them. So I continue to shine light and cage them up and say goodbye to them as I rebuild my foundation.