I have always had issues with nightmares and night terrors. When I was getting my MBA, working full time and coming to Western Mass to visit my now husband I suffered from them. When the stress became to much my brain would say enough. But that nightmare I could handle. I was being chased by a large green fuzzy animal, until I woke up, out of breath and frazzled.

If only this set of nightmares was as easily dealt with. The first set dealt with caskets, the cemetery and the whole burial. I would wake up sobbing, “I can’t leave my baby alone, he will be cold and afraid.” After some meds to get through that set things seemed to calm down. That isn’t to say sleep was easy, or unbothered. By the time night time rolls around, I am tired, emotionally worn out and anything and everything will set me off. With a flood of tears or a short tempered response.

This new set of nightmares can best be described as night terrors. They deal with exploding and burning cars. Fire terrifies me, and it has no base in reality in this situation. Telling my brain that has done no good though. The brain is a funny thing, it takes what it wants and runs with it, reality based or not. I am nothing if not stubborn, I spent a week trying to “tough it out”, dealing with minimal sleep and being more worn out and crankier than normal.

Finally another call to the doctor,an adjustment in medication and for the time being the night terrors have stopped. But of course the adjustment came with a caveat. “These night terrors are fluid, and changing, this is a process and you just need to work through it.” Not words I wanted to hear. I know that this won’t be easy, that my heart is going to hurt for a long time, if not forever but the knowledge that I may encounter these or something like these for an unspecified time, terrifies me. I am learning to live with this grief, it is nothing I would have ever chosen. No parent ever would have, but the more you love, the deeper and stronger the grief.

S.T.U.G. not stung although that’s what it feels like. It is an acronym and it means

Sudden

Temporary

Upsurge of

Grief.

It is the psychological / therapist term for what I am experiencing. The times when I’m driving along and a song comes on the radio that reminds me of Connor (the most recent one was “Boy”, by Lee Brice). Or yesterday when I was scrolling through my texts from my boss looking for something specific. All of a sudden I was in the time frame of texts from Connor’s accident. The tears started to flow uncontrollably, and emotionally I was right back in the PICU for those 12 days. The emotional roller coaster of hell, even though I knew the final outcome. I just couldn’t help hoping that things would be different if I hoped hard enough.

Some of these upsurges I can predict and therefore deal with. Things like holidays, birthdays (my upcoming 50th) and Connor’s upcoming 18th Birthday in March. What would be his graduation from Franklin County Technical School. Those are all upsurges I can predict and prepare for. Ones like the text incident, songs, memories and pictures on Facebook. Those just catch me out of the blue. One minute I am fine, the next I am a blubbering mess. I realize I can’t live in a bubble, as much as I would like to at times. I need to inhabit the real world, the world that will often cause me pain and heartache.

This is the world that a Grieving Mom lives in, we get up everyday and we put one foot in front of the other. We plaster a smile on our faces and face the world. We fake it until we make it.

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💁❤️💔💙

I made it through, that’s what I kept telling myself. If I could just make it through New Years Eve then I would be on the way to healing. Well today is New Years Day, also Kyle’s Birthday and I’m still here. Last night was all about Kyle’s Birthday and the momentous occasion of him turning 21. Our friends Rusty & Kim threw him a Birthday party at Dia’s House. With darts, cribbage, Cards Against Humanity (which Morgan won without a problem). Great food, alcohol, great friends, music , Birthday Cake and lots of laughs.

Because life must go on, not saying that it will remain the same, because it never will. My heart will always be tender, slightly broken, a little bit mashed and crushed. But Kyle should not nor will not suffer from that. He is my firstborn, the one that has paved the way, the one that taught me how to be a mom. Who learned with me that being a mom was not an all or nothing proposition. That you fall, dust yourself off and start again. It is a huge learning curve, and we learn for all of our lives.

Kyle has always been vastly different from Connor, 2 children raised in the same house, with the same parents that had very little in common. Yet they were brother and friends and confidants. Kyle taught me that life at your own pace is fun, you don’t have to go 1000 miles an hour to have fun. Kyle is always talking but he is more contemplative. Connor was always 1000 miles an hour and his jaws didn’t go constantly, yet he was more leap and the net will appear.

Either way, I wouldn’t change anything about their personalities for the world. Love them both to the moon and back. With their differences and similarities. My boys, my world, for whom the sun rises and sets upon.

I wish that there was a specified way that this grieving process went. I am a linear person,we go from A-B and so on in my world. But in grieving things don’t work that way, one day I am fine then something little derails me and I am back inside my own head, filled with grief and pain. I am pretty sure I will be like this for a while, just slogging thru this crap and trying to come to terms with this new normal.

Facebook is generally a happy place for me, but logging on this afternoon changed that. I knew sooner or later the Memories Feature would catch up with me. It did today, with all the glory of a ski slope, a Mohawk Football Sweatshirt, dayglo green ski pants and his precious Go-Pro. Looking like he was ready to take on the world 5 years ago. Instantly my heart broke and the tears started, and I was back in that place again. The place where I can’t catch my breath and nothing matters but the hurt and despair.

This evening one of Connor’s friends has created a Dodgeball Tournament in his honor, something he would have loved. The competition, all his friends and the chance to wallop someone in a sensitive place with a hard ball. My guys at S Keyes Electric will be playing in honor of Connor and that in itself makes me smile. He would have said “bring it on”. So I will go and laugh and watch and yup “bring it on for Connor”

Anyone that I have talked to that has lost anyone will unequivocally state that “The Firsts” are the worst. I wholeheartedly agree. The missing plates, presents and normal traditions have got to be the worst. Trying to create new traditions may be the key, but it doesn’t fix what was lost. The person that you loved is gone, there is a huge hole where they used to be. In my heart there is an enormous cavern marked “Connor”. It is now just full of pain, occasionally there is some happy memories that make there way into the dark place. But right now it is a soul sucking black hole.

I have made it through 3 Firsts, using the phrase “made it” is optimistic, but I am still breathing so I made it. Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. None were like years past, but we muddled through. The changes we made don’t fix the hurt or the pain, but they make the day go by, they got me through, but no one said it was pretty.

Next on the horizon is New Years Eve, Kyle’s Birthday, My Birthday and then….Connor’s Birthday. I was looking forward to him turning 18, now I dread it with all my heart and soul. I want to turn back time, and make the wheel stop spinning. Stop so I can go back and make the accident not happen. Then none of these feelings would be necessary and I wouldn’t have to feel like this.

The feeling that someone took off a limb, or hacked out a vital organ. Like a part of me just isn’t functioning anymore. Or maybe it is the feeling that I am slogging through waist deep mud, constantly exhausted from all the emotions that I just can’t control. I told Brad (Jordan’s dad) the other night that I’m more emotional at night cuz I’m tired. He said “if you want to lie to yourself and say it’s cuz you are tired go for it, but the fucking truth is we just miss him, we all do!” He is right, tired, awake, asleep it doesn’t change the fact that I miss him, and having to slog through each and every one of these firsts just suck.

Today was one of those days where if I could have stayed in bed all day I would have. But there was too much to be done, employees to be paid, vendors to be paid, Credit Cards and Bank Accounts to be reconciled. The oh so very exciting life of a small business accountant.

So I slogged through it all today, Kleenex in hand, trying to stay as positive as possible. Focus on the task at hand and try to push the unhappy thoughts to the back.

I wish it was as easy as that. As easy as, “today I will only think of happy things and I will pretend the nightmare doesn’t exist.” It just isn’t possible, at least for me. Every day some memory comes flooding back, they are mostly good ones, but they still trigger such pain.

They trigger the flood of tears, the inability to catch my breath for a bit and the racking sobs. Sometimes I can catch the trigger beforehand and bury my face in the Kleenex, but usually not. If you were to walk into my office today you would have more often than not found me with wet blotchy cheeks and puffy eyes.

My thought is that the holidays are roaring up like a freight train and I can’t stop them, the time when we were all together, and I got to watch my boys be kids even if they were young men. I still get to watch Kyle be a kid, even if that joy is tempered for him this year. It will be tempered for all of us.

It is a new normal, a new way of life that I will have to adjust to, not like but adjust to. I won’t apologize for my tears or my emotions. I will never apologize for the hurt that I have in my heart and my soul.

The most beautiful or prettiest house on the block is only as stable and secure as the foundation that it is built on. I have the best foundation, my Mom and Dad. They know what true love and even heartbreak is about. My Mom and Dad have been married for over 50 years.

They raised 2 great kids (my brother and I) and taught me how to be a Mom. They stood next to me through thick and thin. Through the hardest thing that I have ever done. Holding me while I cried, wailed and screamed.

They have shown me that love will see you through the highs and the lows. That there is nothing that you can’t conquer if you stick together. My family, all of us are a little crazy, a tad dysfunctional, but I wouldn’t have us any other way.

To my Mom and Dad, there are not enough Thank You’s or I Love You’s to tell you how I feel. So these will just have to do!!!

Love you to the moon and back forever and ever❤️❤️🌙⭐️🌍

Today I met a milestone, not a big one, but a milestone nonetheless. I made it a whole month. So now we go on to month 2. This is how I will measure things from now on. Slowly, but surely, one little step at a time.

Originally when Connor first was involved in his accident I found the mantra to live by. “It is a Marathon, not a Sprint”. That mantra still holds true. This heartbreak will not change in one month, or two or even six. It will be long and arduous, but I will run this marathon. One foot in front of the other.

One day my heart will not ache like an elephant is parked on it, smothering all the feeling out of it. That day is not now, but I am the eternal optimist, call me Positive Polly. I don’t know what the positive is in this, but I will search until I find it.

I will find the joy in my life again, little by little it will come back. There will be more smiles than tears. Someday there will be actual laughter on a regular basis. That day is in the future, most likely far in the future, but it is there. Just call me Positive Polly. I will find the happy again, I am sure of it.

Time does not heal all wounds, it may make them easier to deal with, but it does not heal them. There is a hole in my heart that hasn’t even begun to heal. I realize it has only been a month since this large hole was punched in my heart, but it feels fresh and raw.

30 days into this awful heartbreak and I still have the intense desire to turn the clock back every day. I have tried, and tried but I am having no luck. I open my eyes and the reality remains the same.

Connor is still gone, my family is shattered, my life will never be the same again. He left behind a set of parents, a brother Kyle and his girlfriend Holly. Jordan, Connors Girlfriend who he adored and the feeling was totally mutual. A set of maternal grandparents who can’t figure out why this has happened, and a paternal grandfather who at 90 was sure he would be the next one to vacate this earth.

Add to that the members of his Electrical Shop who I am learning are a truly awesome group of kids. I have met so many of his friends that I am sure I never would have met, and learned so much about a side of my son that amazes me.

Today, 30 days after Connor left this earth I went to his gravesite. The first time since the funeral. It was hard, but cathartic in a way. It was covered in wreaths and baskets, a battery powered lantern so he wouldn’t be in the dark, and a hat left by a classmate. What struck me most was the overwhelming tracks on the snow to his grave. From everyone that had come to visit him

He was loved, by his family and friends and that makes the hole in my heart feel not so raw. It will take time, work, community and great friends. I have all of them.