If the day comes when the pain is less, I'll tell you.

If the time comes when the guilt diminishes, I'll tell you.

If the morning comes when the nightmare isn't so vivid, I'll tell you that too.

Trust me.

I will.

Until then, stop telling ME those things will happen.

I just don't believe you.

I want to, but I can't.

I can't imagine a time when I'll feel any differently than I did then...than I do now.

No amount of time will ever make me un-know what I know. Make me un-hear what I heard. Make me un-see what I saw.

His death isn't what haunts me. Death is part of life. I get that.

If it was just his death I was grieving, I might believe you.

But it's not just his death.

It's everything about his death....the circumstance...the sounds...the smell...the method...the placement...the tragedy....the unending visuals...the why.

Suicide not only robbed me of my son, it robbed me of "normal" grief.

I am a shell of what I was.

Smiling hurts so much now.

A painful mask.

Yet I wear it.

For what lies beneath is so much worse.

Material things do not ease pain. Or fill gaping holes in broken hearts.

Not that we truly believed they would. We simply HOPED (while drinking the largest glass of invisible yet powerful denial juice) that our new "things" would happily numb us to the point where we weren't crying at least twice a day.

Yep, that was our wish.

Didn't come true.

At all.

Since CJ chose to end his life with a gun, we have purchased some stuff. Stuff we didn't necessarily need but stuff we had always wanted. Stuff that gives us AT LEAST brief moments of smiles AT LEAST once in awhile.

None of them do much more than that. Maybe they let us "forget" for a moment or two. Or maybe, if we're really lucky, almost and hour or two. But that's it.

Walk away from these things, heck, look away from these things and the worst possible reality awaits us.

It's cold hearted kick in the gut waits for us no matter how much new STUFF we fill our lives with.

Nope, stuff doesn't make this better.

None of it does.

Not John's new Audi TT convertible that Connor and he flew to Alabama to purchase and then drove home to Maine.

Not our new 60" gorgeous wall mounted LED flat screen TV.

Not my new 2012 Volvo S60 T5 that does everything but my laundry.

Not my new Prada bag, THE PRADA BAG I always dreamed of owning yet knew unless I won the lottery, I would never own. No one was more shocked than I when a family member purchased it for me in a loving attempt to make me smile.

None of it.

Means anything to me.

None of it.

Means more to me than my son.

None of it.

Means my son will come back.

None of it.

Means my heart will ever stop breaking.



We got new stuff.

Yet, my heart still dies a little more each day.


Aren't I lucky?

Everything reminds me of CJ.

Every song, every smell, every sound in some way or another reminds me of the son I no longer have.

And that's hard. Really, really hard.

Didn't realize until this weekend that one thing...no, one person reminds me more than anything of what is no more.

Yet, I love seeing this person more than I can describe.

This person adored my CJ. And my CJ adored this person.

They were almost 20 years apart in age yet age didn't matter.

They both lit up like fireworks on the fourth of July when they saw each other and they both made other people happy.

Their time together was cherished. He made her giggle and she made him feel important.

She talked about him as much as her little vocabulary allowed and he beamed with pride when he spoke of her.

They just clicked from the get go.

Now he's gone.

But she isn't.

His whole life came and went in less than 21 years yet her life is just starting.

That one thought brought me to tears as I watched her play this weekend.

She will never see him again.

She might even forget about him.

Breaks my heart.


MY beloved CJ is gone.

HIS precious Sarah is still here.


I think I'll always cry a little inside when I see her cheesy smile.

Hard not to.

Someone else had one just like it.

He would have been 22 years old today.

It's not getting any easier.

I miss you Shmoops.