Fifteen

“Fifteen”

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love.  It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest.  Grief is just love with no place to go”

Jamie Anderson

           

A friend of mine posted that quote to their Facebook wall the other day and it stopped me in my tracks.  I think it is spot on.  Completely accurate.  Grief does feel like unspent love.

I feel that way about Liam.  Like I have a lifetime of love for him that is stored up and has nowhere to go.  That the love I have for him, formed when he started to grow in me is still here and I don’t know what to do with it sometimes.

I remember thinking when he was gone and we were thinking of having more children that I was afraid I would not love them as much as I loved him.  I thought my heart would not be big enough to handle loving another child.  Of course as soon as I held Dermot I knew I had enough room to spare and then worried about the same thing again when I was pregnant with Wren and discovered again when she was born that I needn’t worry.  My heart apparently is vast and my ability to love has yet to find an end.  But there is a place in it that is just for Liam and that place feels full of unused potential.

I stopped by to talk to my brother-in-law and my nieces yesterday and my brother-in-law asked me how I was doing and I said I was sad.  I was sad as I looked at my fifteen-year-old niece, the only cousin to have met Liam when they were both babies.  I was and am sad because I miss him and yet I don’t know him and that, I think may be one of the hardest parts of all of this.  I’ve written about that before.  I don’t know my own son and that feels so inherently wrong.

I woke up this morning at three and could not fall back to sleep.  I was thinking about all the things I don’t know about him and all the things that have happened in the past fifteen years.  What would I tell him about life these days?  What would I want him to know?  Does he know us?  Does he see?

I would tell him that a lot has happened since he passed away; a lot.  His great-grandfather Wally died and his grandfather Tom.  But he has a little brother and a little sister now and four more cousins.  I would tell him that his dad is better; considered cured and healthy and running races, triathlons and half iron-mans now.

I would tell him that his Joanie still does too much for other people and Uncle Andrew is married now and he has an Aunt Melissa.  I would tell him that Big Jerry is just as cranky and giving.  That his little brother Dermot is full of passion and curiosity and is very funny.  I would tell him his little sister Wren looked just like him as a baby and is independent and fierce and very smart.

I would tell him about my struggles because I would be as honest with him as I am with everyone else.  I would make him understand that I am flawed and that I don’t always get things right but that I always try and that when I fall I get back up.

I would tell him that his dad and I are not together any more but that we do our best to do right by his siblings even when that seems really hard.  We live in separate houses and lead separate lives but will always love each other on some level because we made the three of you.  I would tell him that we are both perfectly flawed and beautifully human and that may be our biggest strength.

Mostly I would let him know that we miss him but that we are alright, because for the most part, we are and that today, on his birthday, we honor him.  We are going to take some of our unspent love and use it to do something good in his name. 

I would tell him that on this day each year, I get to be his mother again and I am grateful.