The way my breath caught just now… and reflexively do the Grief Math and know he will be gone 8 days later, and from nothing.

There has been recent research showing that the cause may be Febrile Seizures, which can be caused by fever- and then I’m wandering back through my apartment that night, wondering if I missed him having a fever somehow- he was fussy that night, for sure, because engraved in my soul is that I got overwhelmed and touched out and put him down by himself instead of laying with him like I always did.

My sweet baby…
My forever baby.
I’m am so deeply sorry.

And now I have two rainbows that are growing daily and fiiinally reaching the end of diapers/pull-ups, and it’s quite bittersweet to think that there are impending Last Times… at least I know they are coming, though. I look these photos, and then I look at my 4 year old sleeping next to me and it sends me all kinds of ways. Is this what he would look like? And another layer of grief for my children and the sibling they don’t have sets in…. It turns out grief, like everything else, is intersectional.

I captioned the photo on the right here #TheseMomentsDontLast on Instagram.,, I had no idea.

If you’re new here and don’t know, I lost my son Patrick to Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood (SUDC) 11 years ago (somehow) and it has been by far the most life-altering, painful thing I’ve had to live through- and unfortunately, that’s saying something.

And so I write to give my grief a home, and I bring his face into your feed to keep his memory alive- he was learning to stick his tongue out here. He was *such* a little ham, he could command an entire dinner table with his antics before he could even talk. He loved to dance, and to jump in the little doorway thing to anything with a good beat. I got 14 months and 4 days with him. He had just finally taken his first steps on the day he turned 14 months. That amber necklace (that he shouldn’t have been sleeping in- know better, do better) was cut off in the ambulance and never seen again. I was gifted two at the same time- he is buried in the other. (And a Thrasher shirt because of who his parents are as people.)

Another tertiary layer of grief I have is for myself. I look at this person and know she was suffering in many ways that felt inescapable, but nothing like what was about to happen. That me is still (mostly) whole as a person, and the absolutely gutting loss she is grieving in losing her father (and naming Patrick after him) was about to dwarf any pain, any ache, any soul-rendering experience she could possibly comprehend. I grieve for her, for the me I used to be. Grief irreversably changes you in the same.way deep love does- it envelops you, awakens senses you didn’t know you had. One opens doors, another closes them… and it’s doubly hard when one is slammed in your face that you should have never seen closed a day in your life. It’s just *wrong*, and our bodies know it.

Yet another hard thing was that I was nursing at the time, and I had the physical sensation of my body asking where the baby went, tears and milk, dripping in like. They say not to stop nursing cold turkey because it signals that the baby has suddenly gone, and our bodies begin a grieving process all on its own because of it, which can cause depression in mothers, even when their babies are still there. I’m reading The Body Keeps the Score (which I’ve heard is outdated, but still has some good points- I’m happy to have more reading suggestions on the topic) and it’s definitely interesting how our bodies, almost separately, but not quite, process trauma and loss.

My 3 year old still nurses off and on for comfort, and I know this is another impending ending- and one I’m honestly pretty ready for- when she is. And then I’m back to wondering if Patrick felt ready or if he was scared- if it hurt, if his last moments were spent wondering why I wasn’t there. And I’ll live the rest of my life without knowing those things.

It doesn’t do anyone good- myself first and foremost, to beat myself up over it, but it definitely affects the way I parent my littles. I have almost never left their sides. No one babysits them, and I can probably count the amount of times I have left the room they are sleeping in on my fingers, possibly one hand.

My therapist asked if I thought my anxiety was founded and I was like… “Um, YES?! I had a toddler leave this plane 10 feet away from me without any rhyme or reason. I stay with my sleeping babies. There’s no way I can tell and nothing I can do to prevent it from happening again.” to which she responded, “Well, that might just happen again, and you’d have to deal with that, too. You need to sop dwelling.”

She’s not my therapist anymore.

People on my fb page have responded in similar ways (although the majority are kind and supportive)- saying that my grief is exhausting or off-putting, or suggest there is some magical way it can be gotten over. I hhhhate hearing “Everything happens for a reason” or other placations that are made to assuage the discomfort of the person saying it with beholding another’s Valid Ass Grief. People expect you to be “better” somehow, some way.

These people are not loss parents.

Yes, it’s easier 11 years on than it was. I can eat food without feeling sick. The times where PTSD from that night interrupt my days and nights are less, but they still happen, and more around his passing date, like now. I still have crushing anxiety any time my children, any of them, are away from me. I’m lucky that they are all under my roof for now- another impending ending, but at least it will be a positive and natural one, in the correct Order of Things.

It will be a Friday next week, just like it was a Friday when he passed. I counted them into the hundreds, just like folks reflexively know how many months old their littles are. It’s been 573 now, but I had to ask Alexa this time. Like I said, things get easier, but the ache remains… it is almost a friend now, Grief. When she comes, I don’t balk at the pain anymore or recoil in fear of it. She comes and sits with me and exists as a testament to how much I will always love him. She is all of my love, hope, and expectations, cut off at the knees and stuck living in between the ache in my heart in memories that stay, and in the void of all of the new ones that never got to be.

And I’m grateful.

Thanks for reading my brain dumping as I try and hold space for myself, and for holding that space with me, too.