Closure or so I thought..

For 3 months I thought that designing and ordering Nathan's memorial headstone would bring closure for me or some sort of peace..sounds crazy huh. In fact the designing part brought me some sort of odd happiness. Giving my baby something beautiful with his name and things he loved on it. Something he can be known by other than just some piece of paper the funeral home left to mark the place he lays. I did give him something simple when in the beginning I had a flamboyant design in mind with huge light sabers that would at night light up. I think I went back to the drawing board 3-4x's cause nothing felt like him. He was a simple,reserved child who didn't require a whole lot and he deserves to be remembered as such not some showy art piece. What I ended with was what I think something rather beautiful that has all the things that he was and what he loved on it, but also in the end it didn't bring me the closure I thought it would. I put off for 3-4 days actually taking the check up to the monument place because of what the realization it would bring. I had complete feelings of dread and not that happy feeling I had while in the design process. The realization of how final this was and the fact that this is IN DEED real..heck its in stone now isn't it. Plain as day. Nathan Garrett Dennis March 22, 2004-June 16, 2012 if that doesn't place something final on it I don't know what does. Its a place of complete HELL! At least now he has something beautiful to mark his place instead of piece of paper that's now turned brown and wrinkled due to time and weather. This at least will weather well and hold up for at least 20 yrs or more. WOW did you read that... 20 YRS or MORE! I look at that and think really? I have.. it will hold till I'm 50. I can't even process being 50 and not having that baby I gave birth too 8 yrs ago. Today as I was doing laundry I began to cry. As I was trying to remember Nathan and my mind had a major blockage and I couldn't. Yes its been 3 months and I have FORGOTTEN my son. If I didn't have pictures I'd swear I'd always had just 2 kids. He doesn't seem real for some reason and I have to remind myself every day that he in deed was. I imagine I'll have to this everyday for the rest of my life. Not sure what kind of life that is, but I can tell you I'll fight to keep remembering what I can till there is no heart beat left in me. Support group is going ok for me I've been 2x and the first time felt like to much, but I wanted to give it another shot so I went Tuesday as its only the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of the month. I won't go into detail ever about the folks in there but I will share the Ahh Haa moments I have while I'm in attendance. This past week I've been asked several times how many children I have by random folks I've made contact with and most times I just say 2. As saying I have 3 leaves me open to giving information I'm not sure I can divulge. The reason for that is simple I'm not sure how I feel about telling strangers I have a son that died and I'm not sure how they will in turn receive the information. In turn it may cause me to become highly emotional, but in group someone made comment that the same thing happened to her this past week and she made the choice to say say exactly how many children she'd given birth to. She wanted to acknowledge that she indeed had 3 children When her middle son passed she didn't stop being his mother. She'll always be his mother. WOW!!! That hit me HARD! Telling people I IN FACT have 3 children keeps Nathan somewhat alive just as talking about him would. I want people who knew him to keep talking about him. From what they tell me at about 3 months people usually stop. I beg you please never stop talking about him. It is one way he stays alive for us. But when strangers ask I will now say I have 3 children and keep the acknowledgement that I do have another child. He's just in another place for now. As I look back on what I thought would bring a small bit of closure this step of marking my sons space I wonder if I'll ever really have ANY closure....

3 months and a deployment later...

As you can tell by the title today is in fact 3 months since we lost our Nathan...its been a bittersweet day today. We decided to stay home from church and do the cemetery take flowers to son and brother. Mostly just stay out of the spotlight. Everyone knows what today is and being asked how are you doing and sympathy looks were just not what I needed today. I needed a day to b one with how I feel. Yes the weather here was rainy and all that went to the funeral remember it was indeed rainy that day. So somber it was. Natalie made comment in the car on the way to see Nathan the rain made her think that since its been gloomy here the past few days it made her feel that God was sad. Nick said the clouds are crying cause Nathans not here. And in fact it does feel like that sometimes...the universe is sad. Were picking up the pieces of ourselves and bringing them into our new ones. Geoff left Tues and the kids did well. We hung our yellow ribbons up that we do every deployment. I got a sitter for the kids so that they didn't have to go to Ft. Hood with me and say goodbye again. Geoff has landed in Romania and will be there till tomorrow mid day i think and off to his next destination for final arrival in Kabul soon. Long journey to get to where he'll ultimately end. Communication will b sparse the next few days so I'll update as I know where he is. Again, I can't believe its been 3 months since I've heard Nathan's laugh and seen his smile. This for me is when it settles in and my heart exhales reminding myself to breathe. You forget to breathe some days. We are slowly smiling more and finding ourselves laughing often. So, this to me is reassurance that the kids can make it through the deployment and I can make it another 3 months without my son...which I imagine every 16th of the month possibly years ahead I will post reminding myself that I made a promise...to celebrate Nathan all the days of my life. Some times I'm finding that our celebrations are with crying and avoiding crowds, other times its looking at pictures.. laughing, remembering what once was. No parties with cake and ice cream here but we do push forward thanking our Heavenly Father that our family was blessed beyond imagine with an experience of a lifetime. We had an absolute angel in our home our very midst for 8 years. 

Profound Thoughts

I finally made it to the new breaved parents group at a different location tonight. I honestly have a MILLION different emotions tonite as I sit and try to sort them out. I'm not sure how to be a breaved parent for one or how long I'm supposed to be one. My dear friend told me I'd be one for a lifetime. I'm not so sure I liked that answer quite frankly...MWAH girl...I know she's a follower.  I guess in someways that label will always be a life sentence I'll have to work through. I know I don't like it..infact I hate the way it sounds and sits in my head. My first thought with that label is sad. I don't want to be sad for a lifetime. I'd actually like the rest of whats left of this life to happy and fulfulled. I also know I'm a different person now...I just don't know WHO that is YET. I hope that the person this journey forms is one I can accept. I was just starting to like aspects of the old me, but this change has started a journey to a very different me. One that in the end I hope the people that are on this journey with me can be ok with. 

Nite Before

On the nite before Geoff leaves I'm left with a MILLION different feelings. I have yet to actually process them all in fact. We spent most of today wrapping up things like getting him a camera and making sure his new computer that my parents gave us was operating properly. We now have capability of skype between his and i's computers so that's nice. Grateful to my parents for giving us an old computer my dad had lying around that he had fixed for us so Geoff could take it with him. Those of you who are wondering how the kids are they are handleing everything really well. There looking forward to putting our yellow ribbons around the the front trees and making the count down chain. We did these things last deployment of course our Nathan was here with us during that time. I swear that time seems like forever ago when really it was just 3 yrs ago. Who knew I'd fast forward 3 yrs and be doing this again but only one child less. My job hunt continues as I'm excited to hopefully find employment to take me out of this house I dread daily. Everything is constant reminders of what was and should be. Feels like some days I could lose my mind with all the what one can only describe as some sort of waiting...doesn't really intend to be that way,but waiting is really the only word I can wrap my mind around. Thinking one day he'll show up or ride his bike straight up on the front porch since all 3 kids seemed to not acknowledge we do have a garage that those things can safely be stored. LOL! Walk out the door and trip on a bike,quite literally falling and praying you don't dislocate anything. LOL! I just hate this house. But the nite before it is and tomorrow we prepare for a different kind of change...one we face head on..