6 yr old wisdom

I'm broken.  I'm hurting.  I feel dead inside.
I get up.   Shower, dress, eat. Do what needs done all day every day.  I feed everyone on time, I clean the house, I'm even eating myself now regularly.  But I'm DOING nothing.  I'm simply a shell of a person going thru the motions of each day.
I even laugh and smile sometimes, although it doesn't feel enough to actually warm me up inside.
I don't actually enjoy anything.

There are moments where I'm driving down the road and my mind won't stop.  It just goes and goes.  The vehicle is usually the time it goes to the darkest moments, the darkest places of that night.  There is nothing to do in the van to make it stop.  No movements possible.  No speed cleaning a room.  Nothing.  The memories flood me.

Dreams or better called nightmares come sometimes.  In one dream I stepped out to the nurses station on the inpatient floor to warm my dinner.  When I got back into his room the nurse was tearing his room apart yelling frantically that she couldn't find Eli.  His bed was there with his blanket and baby but empty.  When I wake from these my mind is racing.  Going thru all of the moments, the memories, in terrifying detail.

School events are the same way.  Since Eli passed, Ari had her very first kindergarten music program, kindergarten graduation, Ben had a school program, Emily graduated elementary school (6th grade) and had a music program.  It's painful so very painful.  All I can think about is how much Eli loved going to these events.  He loved roaming the halls of the kids school, interacting with the kids, enjoying his celebrity status there.  (most of you probably remember the big school Mito awareness week last Sept that the kids put together for Eli.)  He loved to wave at his siblings and clap at all the wrong and right times.  No matter what, we did everything we could to take him to all the school events, for him and for his siblings.  These times are almost impossible for me now, as the void feels HUGE at all these special family moments.

The first time we took the kids to Eli's grave we were laying back looking at the tree.  The tree where Eli's mickey balloon got stuck on the day of his burial. Watching down over us all.  The same tree that the next day no longer held the mickey balloon because it flew away.  Ari asked why it's gone.  Bob said that Eli got free and flew after after we all left the burial, after he knew we were ok.  Ari looked up and said but daddy we will never be ok, Eli's gone.  There was nothing we could say.

The young innocent 6 yr old who is wiser beyond anything she should ever have to be for 6 said what we were all thinking but to afraid to ever say out loud.

We will NEVER be ok.

I kept saying at the hospital that night that I felt as though I was dying with Eli that night.  They promised me I wouldn't.  As we were leaving the hospital they thought that I hadn't, they thought they were right.  They saw "me" walking out the doors, thinking to themselves, see we said you wouldn't die, and you didn't.  I know that they are wrong.  I died with my son.  He and I died in each others arms.  There is no doubt in my mind that a piece of each of my family members died that night too, and myself completely.  Eli was my entire world.  There was nothing outside of that.  He was me.  I was him.  Every moment was Eli and I.  Every piece of my brain was wrapped up in his care and life, my hands were always busy keeping him alive, my feet moving from activity to activity, appt to appt, my heart and soul were so deeply bound with Eli that they simply can't go on.  Every friend, acquaintance, activity, it was all Eli.  He was my life.

I'm left feeling empty and alone and dead.  I feel as though I have nothing left to give, yet I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be for everyone else.  On the outside it looks just right, doing everything I need and should do.

I'm terrified for the day my kids are grown and on their own, as right now they are what keeps me busy.  It isn't enough to keep me, ME, but it is enough to keep me busy.  And right now busy is all I have left.

So in closing.
Yes Ari you're right.  We will never be OK.