Can this all Really be for Real?

There are times when I feel as if I am living someone else's life. In reality of course I know this is my life and these challenges are mine. If I forget, all I have to do now is to look at myself in the mirror, or reach up to my left chest area and feel that port that is implanted right under the skin. AND that throws me back into what is going on here.

Jonathan loved movies, and if he saw one he thought I just had to see, he'd call me and tell me. And I would do the same with him. If he really liked a movie, he'd buy it, if he happened to be working and had money. He ended up with quite a collection and some of them he watched over and over.

I find myself now, when I watch a movie that I think he'd like, thinking "I wonder if Jonathan has seen this one?" and then of course I have to remember he hasn't.

He couldn't bare to watch movies where animals got hurt or mistreated. Even if I assured him it all worked out in the end, NO! He couldn't take it.

Even now, two months later, his death still doesn't feel all that real to me. It wasn't unusual at certain points in his life for us not to communicate for months at a time. It was usually when he was so unhappy, when he was in that dark cold place where he felt so all alone. But I knew I'd eventually hear from him, I knew always he was out there somewhere and I prayed a million prayers that he'd find peace and happiness, I never gave up hope.

So I have to constantly remind myself, he is no longer out there somewhere on this earth, that he won't just pop in, he won't text me those silly forwards from his phone. During these realizations, a great sadness overwhelms me, grips my heart so tightly that I can't breathe, hurts me physically down to my very soul. I don't expect that will ever go away.

I've never really been angry at him for taking his own life. I've been angry that he had to fight so hard all his life, I feel helpless that I couldn't help him more to fight those demons that showed up more than not. But I've never been angry at him. I still can't believe he is gone. Even now. Even though there's an Urn sitting on my shelf with his ashes. Matthew and I have plans for them when I get to Washington. I fear I'll forget what his voice sounded like. I know that every year on his birthday I'll think, "today he'd have been 32 or 35 or how ever many years I live, I'll think of how old he would have been." I know that I will never be the same in some ways. How can I be? I am now incomplete, I am missing a part of my self.

In a really weird way, going through grieving my son and fighting cancer at the same time is a blessing. It gives me the strength I need to get through the treatments and the testing and the sticking. Because compared to losing my son, it is really nothing. I've no doubt I'll get through this cancer thing and go on to live a lot more years, but I can't bring my child back. And that is the reality of my life.