In this journey through grief, I have learned a few things. Some about myself, some about others around me, some about my kids, and some about life in general. I wanted to share some of those with you. Let me start off by saying if I offend you with this post, I am not going to apologize for it. This is for me to write my feelings out. If you are offended or get offended easily, don’t read it. I don’t expect everyone to travel the same road that I do all the time and I sure don’t expect you to all agree with me all the time.

First, you find out who your true friends and family are. The ones that no matter what time or day, you can call them no matter what and they will pick up and listen to you. (Although I have not used the multiple people who have told me I have this available to me). These are what you call true friends even when they have no idea what you are going through they are still willing to stand by you and help yo through.

Two, when someone tells you that it will get easier with time, they have no idea how much harder it gets the further from the day (someone in a blog I follow calls the death day D-Day. I think I will use this as well for this post) it gets. Grief sucks the life literally out of you one breath at a time. There is no easy way, as anyone will tell you who has lost a child, to get through it. Every time you think that you have made a small amount of progress, something gut punches you and pulls you back more steps than the progress you made.

Three, it seems every book you read on the subject of losing a child comes back to the same conclusion. One I already know exists and just don’t want to face. You, your family, the friends who stayed by you, you are all forever changed by the unexpected loss. You will never be the person you were prior to D-Day and everyone must understand that. The other is that you never truly get to the other side of grief. You learn to live with it eating away at you day after day until your life on earth is done. They do say it seems to ease at times but will always ebb and flow like waves of the sea and you will never know when a wave is going to pull you under until you can’t breathe anymore. At that moment you will see the sky and take a breath to stay among the living.

Four, adult kids are more resilient than you think. Yes, they will grieve and yes they will have days that they need their parents, but you will be amazed at how much they will be able to manage their lives without their sibling. Also, you will be amazed at how in tune with your needs they will become. They know when I am having bad days and call to check on me. Million Dollar Brother will just call to talk and Baby Sis being only 17 at the time of D-Day showed an extraordinary amount of maturity during one of the hardest times in her life to date.

Grief is not something to put away in a closet behind old clothes you don’t wear anymore. The longer you hold it in, as most parents of lost children would say, the harder it is to bear when it comes out of the closet. Sometimes being alone in the quiet is a place of rest where you can catch your breath from the gut wrenching knowledge your child is never coming home.

In my short almost eight months of this journey, I still feel numb at times. I still feel Big Bubby isn’t truly gone because that means I can never hear his voice again. Luckily for me, I had saved a voicemail from him and have it on my phone and at times can listen to it. Does that hurt or help in my grief process? I don’t know but at the times that I listen to it, I have comfort knowing I have his voice to hear. It is getting close to the 4th of July, coming this weekend. My babies here will be in school and doing Masked Rider events for the school. I am in no mood to celebrate so we will stay in, hold on to our pups who don’t like loud noises, and try to enjoy the quiet place of rest my husband and I both need.