Reality

The boys marker was placed in to the ground today (exactly 9 months to the day of Lucas's death) and I am going to go see it for the first time tomorrow. I am going by myself so that I can be alone with the boys and my own thoughts. I am so afraid of how I am going to react to seeing it? It just makes everything all the more concrete and real, like I can't pretend that this hasn't happened to us. I have to stare at this headstone and accept that I am a mother whom has buried two children. I have to accept that I am a mother of 3 even though nobody else sees me that way. Tomorrow, I will spend some time individually with all 3 of my children, it is a time that I cherish and yet it eats away at me all at once. Tomorrow will have some finality to all that has happened and all that is left is for me to deal with the grief.

Grief is so tiring. I had someone whom I work with, who is new to the building and whom doesn't know me really very well, tell me that I don't seem depressed and that I deal with all of this very well. I am always surprised by this comment because I don't know if I should feel ashamed, guilty or angry. Angry at the fact that I have learned to control my grief around others. At the fact, that she doesn't see how often I break down or at how numb I have become to the life around me. That I don't care if I stay home, go out, or stay in bed; basically, that I go through the motions of life everyday. That I don't care that I am fat, tired and looking old and I don't have any intention of doing anything about it....what is the point? Or should I feel ashamed and guilty that people see me as "over it" or as someone whom has "moved on" from burying her two children. Should I feel ashamed and guilty that I have figured out how to get out of bed, go to work, sort of take care of my family, carry on meaningless conversations and even laugh when only 9 months ago I said good-bye to my sons. I feel like she was saying to me, if I were you I wouldn't have moved on yet. You moved on too soon, you obviously didn't love them very much or they didn't mean as much to you as they would have meant to another mother. I don't know what to say any more. When I talk about the boys, I can often talk about them without crying because I have learned to talk about the facts. Talking about the facts is so different then talking about the missing, the love, the grief and the shattered dreams. Talking about the facts, allows me to stay in this place without tears, without overwhelming emotion, it allows me to be numb and not lose my composure.

Tomorrow my reality will be 10"x20" cold piece of marble in the ground. I will feel the smoothness of its surface and the cut of the letters. I will rub my hands across their names all while longing to feel their skin on mine. I will cry out there names and my tears will fall on to the ground where they lie below me. Tomorrow, my reality is a plot at the cemetery where both of my sons lay and where my heart has been buried along with them.