Sometimes, you know what you must write, but it just does not fit the time of the moment. That has been the story with this post the past seven days. The delete button has been pushed at various times over the last week, but the time was just not then. Some have even suggested that,"Oh, you have a writer block". Uh! no, I don't. Thoughts flow from my head like a creek running wild below a mountain bridge. And, for more fact there, that bridge was washed away a day after I had left the Big Thompson River Canyon area in Colorado. I could have been killed. That story could be written, but there again, it's not it's moment in time. In fact, July of 1976 was it's time. Not mine.
Never-the-less, I keep trying to sort volume numbers from chapter numbers and sometimes, enough falls out that somehow probably makes more sense to me than to my readers, but hey, that's life!. This is a hard time for me without the medical part anyway.
Although, I came to a resolution with myself as to how I would continue to remember my son each year without the grief and pain that I have felt the past twenty-two years. If it had not been for my strong faith, sometimes I wonder were I would be today mentally. Yet, I have been able to work my way though this to a point that I think my son would be very pleased and I can accept that the good Lord gave my son to me for 26 years. Trying to imagine those 26 years with out him would not be possible.
The thing that has sifted though the nets of time is the fact that I have begun to realize just how many men that I know that have lost their first born or other station of birth of their son. It absolutely blows my mind to read a list of names that I have jotted down as it came to mind that I have worked with so many men and women that have lost a son. It's not an easy thing to be able to recall those names, including two of my best friends and dozens of others that I have known over the years.
Sometimes, I have felt that I should reach out and start a support group, but there are plenty of those already. What I'm searching for is a far deeper purpose.Not only why my son was taken at such a prime time in his life,but the things that I don't know. I'd love to know where he went in Germany when he made a trip there before he graduated from college. He had ask me if he could take a year off. Asking my permission was something I never expected him to do, although he did everything right by the book.
Last year was the final year of mourning. I took on a 20-year mourning when I learned of his death.So, frankly, my mind has been occupied with how to unhitch from that mourning period and still remember the time of his death and burial. I'm making my way to that point in time when I will finally find out if I can get through that period and still feel that loss. The pain will never go away. I know this already. But, at the same time, I want to remember him from some of the things that he wrote to me from trips to Put-In-Bay Island he made with friends while he was working toward his degree.I still read some of his letters and I can hear his voice as if he were telling me what he had written on the pages that I was holding. In the separation, the first year and the last year of the deep mourn period were not counted.
In all fairness to my two remaining children. I love you both in the same degree that I loved your brother. I have discussed this before in that each of you were equal to me in some special way, from my daughter being my first girl, your younger brother being the only one that I witnessed his birth besides being the baby of the family. I could never pick a favorite. I love you all equally. Always remember that.
