Traces

  Mom came over for the last coupla days. She helped me completely shovel out the kid's playroom and then today, the school room. I'm trying to make sense of this cluttered and overwhelming house. It's amazing what can happen in 8-9 months of not organizing or throwing out one single McDonald's toy your kids get. I think we got rid of 70% of my kids' toys. I didn't really think I'd get rid of that much, but they really aren't playing with a lot of the stuff anymore, and I realized, I'm not really holding onto it for Gray anymore. He won't be needing them. I think I did okay until we opened up my hope chest. I forgot it was filled w/ baby toys. Like the toys you buy your kid when he turns one. It was almost full of them. That really made me sad. The stuff he will never use. Never play with. Never discover or laugh about. Drool on. Teethe on. Those are the hardest things. Not so much the things he's used and worn, but all the stuff he never will.

  I went in to Gray's nursery today to put something in there. It's kinda like a time capsule in there. The "after" time capsule. Bags from the hospital still full of the clothes and hats he wore while he was there; RMH 31 bag full of yarn and a half-crocheted baby afghan for Gray; hospital bracelets I cut off of Gray back in December, w/ the date and "11 weeks old" typed on it. Gallon baggies full and overflowing w/ cards that I received for the last few months. Bins of burp rags, bibs, sippy cups, bottles. A bumbo seat that he never sat in. A cradle piled high with stuffed animals handed down from his big brothers, w/ even more piled on top that he got from  both of his hospital stays. Copies of the newpaper article, w/ our picture plastered across the front. But what gets me the most is looking at his crib sheets he never used. The cute outfits I bought him with the tags still on. The little straw fedora I bought him, that he never got to wear. His diaper bag, a pocket still filled w/ syringes from his seizure meds. All of it is in his nursery. The adorable nursery I worked so hard on, just mingled in with his furniture, decor, big name letters hung on the wall....The joy and hope of dreams before, and the sadness of illness and shattered dreams after. It hurts so bad. Every time I go into his room, it hits me full force.

  As we were cleaning out the school room today, I ran across notes my mom had taken while we were in Shands with Gray. She'd written down questions she'd asked the doctors, procedures they were going to do, test results they were going to tell me... It's so hard, because there are traces of him everywhere. In every room. I run across something like this every day. In the weirdest of places. Here I was, planning my older boys upcoming school year and then running across that note. It's like everywhere I look, there is a constant reminder that he is GONE. That we went through something unimaginable. That my perfect baby was not well. The void feels so dark and huge in moments like that. It blows me away.

  Then we start cleaning off the boys' art table and I run across Evan's Angry Birds notebook. The notebok he drew in the whole time he was at the hospital. He drew page after page of angry birds forts, wipeout courses and hidden picture pages. I thumbed through it, desperately trying to find the one page I knew was there. The obstacle course that had "GRAY GET  OUT of THE HOSPITAL" written amongst the obstacles, as if to say, if you can only conquer every single obstacle and make it through to the finish line, your brother will get to finally come home. I found the page and I stared at it, thinking back to Evan quietly sitting in Gray's hospital room, humming songs to himself and drawing one of  his hundreds of silly drawings.Yet, he was really doing a little art therapy session all along, unknowingly. That picture always blew me away. I tore it outta the notebook and went to put it in one of the gallon baggies in Gray's cradle in his nursery....and got stuck there. I started looking thru his clothes from the hospital, then thumbing through all the ones he never wore. I could see everyone's face from my baby shower, so happy, laughing, as I opened each gift, each sweet little outfit, and picturing my sweet baby in them. Still hanging there in his closet. Never to be worn....at least not by MY son. My heart breaks over and over. All the time. Every day. There are traces of him everywhere. Everywhere.

  Then I was picking up the coffee table and ran across the big yellow tablet that I'd written 8 full pages of things to do for Gray's graveside and funeral services..... Lists, songs, quotes, verses, cemetery and church info. Such a jumbled mess of notes on each page, with no rhyme or reason. I could see how fried I was in those moments after Gray's death, in those notes. I can see the scratchy writing. The exhaustion. The agony. It took me right back. I tore those pages out and saved them too. More traces of my boy....

   I had no idea it would be this hard. In the hospital, when we knew things weren't going well, I finally allowed myself think about the "what if's" a little more. Like, what if he died? What would I do? What would I feel? Would I be able to go on? and how? How would I handle it? How would the boys react? Randall? I couldn't fathom it. I took myself through scenarios...I guess trying to role-play it all out in my brain, as if I could shield myself from some of the excrutiation if I practiced it in my head before it all went down....It sounds terrible, and I never did camp out there too long, because it made me want to lose my mind with sadness. But one thing I know, it was never even an iota of how terrible it really is now. Losing Gray is beyond anything I'd imagined. The pain is literal pain. Physical pain. Horrific at times. A heavy suffocating feeling deep in my chest. It hurts me to my core, completely deflating me and making me feel flat. Like I'm aware of every single breath I take. Every step I take. It all feels so heavy. Every thing I do and every single place I go, it's like something is GONE, missing. Not there. I miss it all. Every moment I had with him.... Even the bad days. The horrible days. Because even those horrible days meant one thing...that my son was alive, and I was there with him.

   I just want to be honest about Gray's life, and my journey through grief. I want to be real. I want to  shed some light on what it really feels like to lose a child, to grieve, and mourn. Yet, even though I feel all these horribly sad things, I'm still moving. Standing. Living.  Fighting.  Now, I'm not fighting for Gray, because he is perfect and whole and smiling down on me and all of us. But I'm fighting for myself. For my family. My boys. My sanity. My purpose. For my son's memory.

  I know God has a much bigger purpose than I can even fathom, but satan is just as busy, working to tear me down, shred me to pieces, and spit me out. I am very well aware of the spiritual battle going on right now. But, God is greater. He always prevails and always has the final say. I'm so glad I am on the same side as Him. He's walked with me for all these long, hard months, and He continues to take my hand and gently lead me now, even though sometimes I follow kicking and screaming. I know He cares and that He will never leave me alone. He never has.  

  "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed."~Psalm 34:18. This verse is my new theme verse.  I ran across it in a wonderful little booklet on grief that my pastor sent to me right after Gray died. I do feel God's presence. Much more than ever before in my life. My spirits are crushed, but He says He will rescue me. I am trusting Him to come through on His promise. I know He will. #TeamGray <3 Gray's Mommy.