Everyday is an intricate maze of emotional landmines around our life since cancer invaded our family. Even more so since it stole Declan from us. Today I fell head first into a landmine. I would almost liken it to jogging along a path and rolling your ankle off the path. You know how you’re on your feet one second and then WHAM you’re on the ground. It’s shocking, and as much as you would think our lives have laid a protective groundwork around our hearts…it hasn’t. Declan dances in and out of my thoughts all day, everyday. Everyday…just like my other boys, he’s just not here.
So you’d think I wouldn’t be shocked when I get rocked by an emotional moment…maybe I’m doing a much better job of controlling my emotions, too good. Today I learned about another boy who was taken from his family. It isn’t that his life is any more or less important than every other child I’ve learned about since entering this insane world; they are all precious and the center of their respective universe…as they should be.
What was different? I read Tyler’s Mom’s words about his final hours and in those words I felt Declan. Felt the events in his final days that mirrored her son’s. Remembered the feel of his cool skin against my cheek after he left us. Remembered how amazing it was to finally hold him in my arms again, nuzzle his sweet body against mine…the way a mother should hold her 11 month old; except the little boy I love was gone. Oh he felt amazing in my arms but what I truly ached for, my sweet baby…was gone.
I’ve pushed away a lot of the raw feelings of those last few days because well, they are still so raw and really still so unbelievable. Today, I fell off the jogging path back into the thorns of August 2010 and my heart broke all over again. It broke for Tyler’s family because I know, I know what it was like to watch my son lose his battle with cancer…to see the newness of his young vibrant body fight against a demon so strong. Truly fighting to live but not having the means to be able to do so because of the poison that is cancer was overtaking him. I fell into the hole of helplessness again and remembered the pain of knowing there was nothing I could do to save my baby. My baby was going to die and then having to wait and watch as the demon overtook his worldly body; knowing death would mean peace for him but hell for me. And truly not until the second of his death did the realization of the horror of what it means to lose a child come into focus.
I fervently pray every day for the miracle that did not come for our Declan. I pray because I believe all children should be able to live their lives; but really I want to save another Mommy, Daddy and family from this hell. It is a hell in so many ways…the world seems “fine” from the outside and really it is on so many levels…we laugh, we enjoy each other and truly revel in the beautiful boys and family we have; but in all that joy is the hole of incompleteness.
We are a man down. We are the family gathering with that one special relative missing…always. Falling off the path. It’s a great run and we’ll get up and brush off the dirt from the last fall and enjoy the rest of the run but the sting of the fall is still there, lingering…reminding us of what could have been.
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