Grief Graffiti

It’s raining today…and will be all this week according to the weather forecast. It always seems to rain on dates that are important to him, at least that’s what Troy says. So it feels fitting that it will be raining this week, the week we lost him. I don’t know how I am going to get through these coming days. I haven’t been sleeping well, and when I lie awake in bed I think of all the ways I failed him, all the ways I should have heeded the clues better, or could have saved him. Things that should have been red flags & made me fly up to Portland and check in him. Strange calls that made no sense at the time that I should have read more into.

When I share these thoughts with others they are so quick to say “you can’t think like that”, but I can. And I do. And it’s impossible not to wish I had done things differently & that the outcome could have been different. It’s something I will have to live with until the day I die. How is it that as his mother I failed him at the moment he needed me most? Did he suffer? Did he cry for me? God, I just wish I could have at least held him in his final moments. That I could have let him know how much I loved him and always will. I want to believe he knows this now, but it’s hard to know what to believe anymore.

As mothers we wish we could have been better, protected them more, loved them harder, saved them from this harsh world. Like these beautiful words from a fellow bereaved mother:

I wish I could have been the perfect mother.

I wish I could have sheltered you

from the harshness of life,

….sheltered you from yourself.

All those times you threatened to self-destruct,

I wish I could have lessened the pain for you,

when you felt as broken

and as helpless as I did.

I wish I could have whisked us both away

to a fairy-tale land of make-believe,

where life wasn’t harsh and unyielding.

Where life wasn’t full of challenges and pitfalls,

that open up without warning,

like sink-holes,

changing the landscape in an instant,

claiming many an unsuspecting casualty.

I wish I could have helped you see through my eyes,

how beautiful, talented and gifted you were.

I wish I could have helped you see

what you brought to this world

with your uniqueness,

your kindness,

your compassion,

your grace,

in a world that is burning.

I wish I could have helped you to understand

that the thoughts that ran rampant

like crazed looters through your mind,

stealing your joy and zest for life,

didn’t belong to you….

that they weren’t yours,

were not a measure of you,

that they weren’t truthful…

they weren’t honest.

I wish I could have held you that little bit longer

in a mother’s embrace,

before the world got hold of you,

ripping you from my bosom like a sticky plaster

from an unhealed sore.

I wish I could have paved your way with promises

that you’d never falter or fall

at life’s impossible hurdles.

I wish I could have equipped you

with an impenetrable armor,

so that life couldn’t hurt your gentle soul,

so that others couldn’t bring you to your knees

with brutal labels

that cut open your fragile heart

and made you bleed tears of shame.

I wish I could have protected you,

when life seemed impossible for you to bear,

when you endlessly searched

for a way out of the maze

of the madness and misery.

I wish I could have promised

that life would make sense in the long run,

in a way that you could see,

in a way that we could both comprehend.

I wish I could have saved you….

but maybe,

just maybe,

it is you, who is saving me…

~Val Griffiths, Embracing Grief: A Love Story