So Mother's Day is almost here. Its one of those holidays that I don't anticipate being hard since Joseph died. I don't know why. Christmas and his birthday are obvious ones. Halloween. Things that are kid oriented. But I'm his mother and he is gone. Seems like a no brainer that it would suck. But the degree to which it has sucked has, once again, taken me by surprise. It continues to surprise me how much my grief can surprise me still.
I celebrated Mother's Day last night with Stewart and the boys, as I usually spend Mother's Day with my own Mom. I went to hang out at Stewart's apartment. We ate chinese food, exposed the boys to the bliss that is Indiana Jones and then played Guitar Hero and Wii bowling together. The kids were terrific. They made me homemade decorations for my office at work and got me a Dallas Stars jersey with Zubov's number on it. By the end of the evening poor Alex was laughing so hard at things that he was bursting into tears, which always makes me feel a little sorry for him. He was exhausted. So the kiddos went to bed and Stewart and I hung out for a little while. The kids had decided they were ready to clear some of Joseph's things out and Stewart had a big rubbermaid container filled with most of Joseph's "friends", meaning all the freaking stuffed animals he had collected over the years. That was hard to see. Then Stewart brought out to show me a SpongeBob folder of Joseph's he had discoverd somewhere in their room that he'd not found before. God damn, seeing it and its contents was so freaking wonderful and yet just shattered my heart all over again.
It had his handwriting in it. The goofy kid had made a birth certificate for his sea monkeys. Yep, you read that right. He named his Sea Monkeys and they had a dated birth certificate. 05/26/2005. One week before he was diagnosed with cancer. Three years ago on his birthday. Bob, Larry, Curly, Moe, Megatron and Destroya. Megatron the Sea Monkey. Destroya the Sea Monkey. It just cracked me up. There was some of his art work in there too, not the best stuff he ever did. He loved to draw stick figure cartoons. Its funny how even the awful stuff that proves I let him watch things on TV that I should not have gets into my heart and makes me nostalgic and sorrowful at the proof of his maleness and that he was growing up. You know. Things like decapitations and captions from a stick figure holding a gun declaring "Suck It!" to another stick figure. Things that are moving to a mother's heart. Yeah. It sucks to need to have a good talking to with your preteen and to find you can't. I would give anything. Any. Thing.
His handwriting was in there. All these things. Proof. Proof he was here. Sometimes I can wonder if I imagined him. But that last night was just the essence of him, and it poured over me like a syrup of grief and loss. He was 13 and so handsome and just on the brink of becoming the man he was to be. I wept so hard all the way home, the kind of weeping where I make sounds that frighten myself, the kind I seldom indulge in because it is so draining and so sad, so hard to get back up from. It knocked me flat, cleansed my soul, left me breathless with the hole that was his existance here. He was so funny, so different, so unique and so comfortable with his uniqueness.
I am getting better at letting things trigger a sense of him still being near, still being with me. It comforts and quiets me, and lets me move forward with so much less agitation and depression. I am grateful for it.
Statistics is over and I am so glad. It got very hard at the end there. My final went okay. I didn't ace it but I think I did well enough to maintain my B average. As my friend Allison told me on the way to that test...at least I know I never have to take that class again! I was just sick with tension over the exam. Now I have a four week respite until Anatomy and Physiology I start. I think I will enjoy that class more. It will be more blatantly pertinent to nursing, and I am hopeful my background as a medical transcriptionist will help me somewhat with comprehension.
I celebrated Mother's Day last night with Stewart and the boys, as I usually spend Mother's Day with my own Mom. I went to hang out at Stewart's apartment. We ate chinese food, exposed the boys to the bliss that is Indiana Jones and then played Guitar Hero and Wii bowling together. The kids were terrific. They made me homemade decorations for my office at work and got me a Dallas Stars jersey with Zubov's number on it. By the end of the evening poor Alex was laughing so hard at things that he was bursting into tears, which always makes me feel a little sorry for him. He was exhausted. So the kiddos went to bed and Stewart and I hung out for a little while. The kids had decided they were ready to clear some of Joseph's things out and Stewart had a big rubbermaid container filled with most of Joseph's "friends", meaning all the freaking stuffed animals he had collected over the years. That was hard to see. Then Stewart brought out to show me a SpongeBob folder of Joseph's he had discoverd somewhere in their room that he'd not found before. God damn, seeing it and its contents was so freaking wonderful and yet just shattered my heart all over again.
It had his handwriting in it. The goofy kid had made a birth certificate for his sea monkeys. Yep, you read that right. He named his Sea Monkeys and they had a dated birth certificate. 05/26/2005. One week before he was diagnosed with cancer. Three years ago on his birthday. Bob, Larry, Curly, Moe, Megatron and Destroya. Megatron the Sea Monkey. Destroya the Sea Monkey. It just cracked me up. There was some of his art work in there too, not the best stuff he ever did. He loved to draw stick figure cartoons. Its funny how even the awful stuff that proves I let him watch things on TV that I should not have gets into my heart and makes me nostalgic and sorrowful at the proof of his maleness and that he was growing up. You know. Things like decapitations and captions from a stick figure holding a gun declaring "Suck It!" to another stick figure. Things that are moving to a mother's heart. Yeah. It sucks to need to have a good talking to with your preteen and to find you can't. I would give anything. Any. Thing.
His handwriting was in there. All these things. Proof. Proof he was here. Sometimes I can wonder if I imagined him. But that last night was just the essence of him, and it poured over me like a syrup of grief and loss. He was 13 and so handsome and just on the brink of becoming the man he was to be. I wept so hard all the way home, the kind of weeping where I make sounds that frighten myself, the kind I seldom indulge in because it is so draining and so sad, so hard to get back up from. It knocked me flat, cleansed my soul, left me breathless with the hole that was his existance here. He was so funny, so different, so unique and so comfortable with his uniqueness.
I am getting better at letting things trigger a sense of him still being near, still being with me. It comforts and quiets me, and lets me move forward with so much less agitation and depression. I am grateful for it.
Statistics is over and I am so glad. It got very hard at the end there. My final went okay. I didn't ace it but I think I did well enough to maintain my B average. As my friend Allison told me on the way to that test...at least I know I never have to take that class again! I was just sick with tension over the exam. Now I have a four week respite until Anatomy and Physiology I start. I think I will enjoy that class more. It will be more blatantly pertinent to nursing, and I am hopeful my background as a medical transcriptionist will help me somewhat with comprehension.
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