Crazy Ideas Of A Grieving Mother

At the beginning of losing my child, I truly lost all sense of rationale and sanity. I can’t say that all people experience this, because I am not all people. I grasped onto whatever I could find. I started sinking like a boat in the middle of the ocean clinging onto whatever wreckage I could find of tangible reality. It was then I lost my grip and started sinking. I sank all the way to the bottom of despair and crashed on a rock. I looked around the deep blue while the light above me grew dimmer and dimmer as night fell.
Phrases entered my mind from all sides; Nothing further we can do….he’s gone…autopsy…goodbye…amen. The phrases were not audible with my human ears but rather etched into something deeper than my mind. The scenes like 8mm slides kept replaying of the last day of his life. I saw the people coming toward me and their lips moved; their arms embraced me, but underwater it’s impossible to hear clearly. I can’t remember when I was pulled to shore. It might have been when I was told I had to go back into the world that the rest of the humans lived in.
I went to work 9 days later and the first thing I get is a phone call from a woman asking me why I didn’t return her phone call last week. She sounded pretty upset, but I really didn’t give a fuck at that moment in time about her concerns. I wanted to go home and be alone with my sadness. I still long to pretend the world around me doesn’t exist so I can think of him and somehow be with him on another plane of existence.
The first holiday without my son was Easter. Again, impossible ideas flooded my days of how my son would return. His original due date was Christmas…he was baptized the same day as Jesus….he would rise again on Easter…I had a crazy idea. Easter came and went, but I didn’t see Johnathan move the stone and he never walked back home with open arms for supper. I had to go back to the drawing board and find a different way to save him.
It was the first Mother’s Day after Johnathan passed that I started to accept the way our conversations would be from now on; seemingly one-sided. I walked out of the house toward the cemetery to visit my son and I stepped on a rock. Our driveway is usually small pebbles and this one sat at the end of the sidewalk.

From this day forward, I learned I had to open my mind and my eyes to the signs my son would show me. I learned that our conversations didn’t have to be one-sided if I could recognize the encounters that happened were surely not out of coincidence. Perfectly formed moments sprang forth and for just that small amount of time, I felt like we had connected transcending space and time, united on a common wavelength of love. He would leave me white feathers as I walked into the cemetery, perfectly-fitting songs would start playing, lights would flicker or turn off completely, children would tell me things I never mentioned about Johnathan, and miracles happened.
Just last week, my mother and I were reminiscing about Johnathan. I suddenly started crying (sobbing actually) about how I failed him because I couldn’t keep him safe. A mother’s job is to keep her child safe and I failed him. All of a sudden my Spotify playlist changed songs and Coldplay’s Til’ Kingdome Come began to play. The air changed, my heart twinged, and the world around me slowed…it was another message.
Steal my heart and hold my tongue
I feel my time, my time has come
Let me in, unlock the door
I never felt this way before
And the wheels just keep on turning
The drummer begins to drum
I don’t know which way I’m going
I don’t know which way I’ve come
Hold my head inside your hands
I need someone who understands
I need someone, someone who hears
For you, I’ve waited all these years
For you I’d wait ’til kingdom come
Until my day, my day is done
And say you’ll come and set me free
Just say you’ll wait, you’ll wait for me
In your tears and in your blood
In your fire and in your flood
I hear you laugh, I heard you sing
I wouldn’t change a single thing
And the wheels just keep on turning
The drummers begin to drum
I don’t know which way I’m going
I don’t know what I’ll become
For you I’d wait ’til kingdom come
Until my days, my days are done
And say you’ll come and set me free
Just say you’ll wait, you’ll wait for me
Just say you’ll wait, you’ll wait for me
Just say you’ll wait, you’ll wait for me
Some people might say it’s another crazy idea, but I’d rather be considered crazy than miss out on our ethereal communications.
His words sometimes formulate in my thoughts and just for a moment, I can “hear” him. Last night he gave me a mantra for yoga: healing mama...healing. It’s a conversation made through the heart and the best way I can explain it is the understanding of faith that he still exists just not in a physical form. All of this time I understood having faith in God, how could I doubt the same with my son?
If you have lost a child or someone close to you, keep your eyes and your heart open to communication that doesn’t involve a text or words. Synchronicity is just a different mean of communication.
A Mother-Son Conversation:






