Does anyone read these? Grief...

  Recently, a dear friend said, " I don't know that anyone even reads blogs anymore." While she may be 100% accurate, I realized I don't even care tonight. I don't care what I should or shouldn't do to gather an audience. I tend to avoid conforming to what seems popular at the moment. TikTok, Insta, and social media, generally feel more about what an algorithm will pick up and canned responses which aren't natural no matter how many times I try to record them.

Grief is a peculiar thing that one simply cannot understand, articulate, or categorize completely. This was my first time with up-close in-your-face grief, so I am only guessing. Writing is cathartic for me. Regularly the depth of the things I feel and the inability to capture or convey them overwhelms my soul. Frankly, in my lifetime, I have met just 1 singular person who gets that part of me. How? How can I be known and so unknown simultaneously? 

My 16 would have now been 17-year-old son took his life 2 days shy of 11 weeks ago. There is an ocean of time between when I saw him last and today. We did not know he had Hepatitis B, which had progressed to stage 3 and permanent liver damage. His life was without question going to end too soon whether he determined the day or his body did. 

So, here I sit at the cusp of a new day, unable to sleep. Oddly enough, besides the very first night, I did not sleep; I haven't had trouble getting rest. There are many odds and ends I could be doing to make this additional awake time beneficial; however, I'd rather spill my emotions into words. It is funny how we hardly notice certain pieces of others' lives until we connect. The mass amount of those grieving around me is remarkable. Grief is universal to all religions, ethnicity, or beliefs. We steadfastly try to align ourselves with the connections and determine whose situation is worse and therefore preface our opinions with words like, "It's not the same." What is the worst possible case? Everyone tells me losing a child is the worst, as if somehow losing a spouse or multiple immediate family members isn't equivalent. The age of someone has something to do with this scale; the older a person was when they died, indeed, carries the most significant impact on the definition of severity. Why do we need to even rate it at all? Humans are inherently looking for order, so it makes sense why we try. 

None of those thoughts, issues, or ideas takes away even a twinkling of my experience. At the very least, it gives pause from it to react to such a debate. Which stage of grief am I in? Is everything I feel "normal"? Am I truly o.k.? Who decides what o.k. actually is, and why do I need to even waste my precious energy figuring it all out? Lastly, does your child committing suicide to reflect on you as a parent? I mean, I have always shared my experiences with children and teens. Does this invalidate my advice? Don't pretend you don't judge others' opinions; how is this any different? For the record, I do not carry the guilt that this was my fault. Yet, I know the situation more intimately than you, dear reader. Is this the circumstance in that I am not judged, though? If my child were to say break into a store or steal something, I would be? Our perceptions of situations are all over the place, and the rabbit hole in my mind is endless. 

Either way, I love my son and hate the way his final year ended. I rest assured in the hope of Christ, whom he loved, as evidenced by so much he left behind. I will hug him again, cry many more times until I get there and hold tight to every fond memory of his lifetime.