Yesterday was one of those days. The kind of day that I didn’t want to go anywhere, I wanted to stay home in my pjs all day. Everything made me cry, I replaced my eye makeup 4 times before I finally gave up and just wiped it all off. I was fully embedded in the notion of “Why?” Why me, Why us, Why Connor, Why did this happen to our family, our community, our friends? That was closely followed by the “What ?” What did I do wrong? As a mom, as a wife, as a human being in general?

I know intellectually that I did nothing wrong, that I couldn’t protect Connor from the accident. But that doesn’t stop the pain, or the tears from it. As for the Why? It was just an accident, caused by the perfect storm of conditions. Wet roads, heavy rain, dense fog, soft shoulder and sloped guardrails. Add those all together and you get the fatal tragic accident.

At S Keyes Electric, Inc. we have an employee who is also a social worker (really a Licensed Social Worker). He asked me how I was yesterday, while knowing I was gonna fall apart like a house of cards in a wind storm. He offered some words of wisdom that have been running around in my head since.

1. You will have guilt, it isn’t rational or real. But it is what a good parent does.

2. Just move through the guilt and don’t let it be your living/resting place.

3. I know you are an accountant and you are used to a linear/organized flow of things. This grief has no linear progression.

4. It will come and go in waves, you will have good and bad days. For no real reason (like yesterday)

5. Being angry that Connor was taken and not someone who “wasn’t going somewhere or didn’t have a plan and goal in life” is normal. Feel it and accept the anger, there is no one to direct the anger to (rationally or intellectually).

6. Don’t bottle up the emotions, talk it out, write it out and cry it out. The tears are good. They are your bodies release of emotion.

I cry like a faucet, I talk to my friends, my mom, the pets. I am not one that bottles this up. I am worried that my friends will get tired of my tears and my unhappiness. I hope my good friends will wait till I am not so sad all the time. I can’t give them a timeline, but someday I won’t be such a wet dishrag, I hope💁❤️💔💙