I read a story online this morning from an elderly gentleman describing grief. That the deeper you love, the deeper the grief, and that someday the grief won’t feel like 100 feet waves every 5 seconds, with no time to breathe in between. I long for that day, the days when I can think about Connor without tears running down my cheeks. The days when the Facebook memories don’t cause a full blown meltdown before I even get out of bed.

Currently the waves are 10 feet tall with 5 seconds in between to breathe. I am treading water so I don’t drown. It is exhausting and painful, it makes every part of my body hurt, physical as well as emotional, and there are no way to separate the two.

My dear friend Erin has never lost a child, but wasn’t very old when she lost her husband and was left on her own with a small child. She assured me “that someday the 17th of the month will pass me by without a flood of tears, that someday I will be able to breath on that day without a hitch, and the fear that I will see, hear or smell something that sends me back into the depths of grief.” It has been 20 years for her, and in the last 3 she is finally able to breath on the 4th of every month.

I have hope, hope that I will be able to crawl out from under this heavy weight, hope that someday I will smile first instead of cry. Hope that someday Jordan will find some peace as well. The fruition of these hopes and dreams will come with time, and hard work. Time just ticks by, with the clock, and the hard work comes from the time I spend in therapy, the time I spend with my dear friends, and the time I spend writing and thinking.

This pain will never go away, because like any good mom, I loved Connor with every beat of my heart and to the depths of my south. What it will do is become manageable with time, and that is all I can hope and dream for.