January 11, 2009 -- losing my son

Starting a blog here. Snow falling softly as I look past the monitor through the window into my back yard. 2010 -- It sounds so space-age. The last time I kept a journal was 1968. It began:   "That Bill  likes me so much."  New Year's eve, I was babysitting and Bill was home talking to me on the phone. Six months later we would consummate our teenage passion and a year after that, I would be pregnant with Ben. Forty years later, we've long since lost each other and five years ago, Ben. In fact, my son, our son,  would have been forty on his next birthday. What a world without him in it.

Losing my son put everything into perspective. I'm not so sure that means that before he died, everything was NOT in perspective, and now it has been corrected? Just changed, really. Things that were "larger than they appear" are now, not so large. And vice versa. How many times was I racked with pain over someone's rejection of me? And now, I can't imagine why I would care. Nothing really makes me sad anymore, or gets me wound up. There is no loss greater. I lived through it and I'm still here. A couple of years ago, Joel, my other son, knowing how I reacted to the loss of Ben and his children, tried to pull the same thing by pulling away, not seeing me for a year, forbidding me to see his baby girl. He knows how to press buttons, that one. But it didn't really work. I knew he was okay. I knew where he was. I knew what he was up to. I didn't really know the baby, I had nothing to give up there. I could see he was trying to hurt me. Hurt people hurt people, so they say. But I also knew it didn't have much to do with me. Just something he needed to do.

I still loved him, love him still. He came back. I'm sorry for his loss, too. Maybe losing your only brother is the worst thing.  It hasn't made him kinder or more tolerant.