When my son died, my world collapsed. I am a mother of four boys, and now I only have three left. My sons lost their brother and gained a wound on their heart that would never be healed. There will always be an empty spot at my dinner table now, the spot where my darling Sean should be sitting. Losing him has been the worst thing in the world. I would rather be dead and him alive. That’s the way the world is supposed to work. A mother should never bury her child.
When he died, I didn’t want to be sent hundreds of hybrid tea rose varieties that would just sit in my kitchen until they eventually died and then get thrown away. Watching the roses die would have just been a terrible reminder of how long it had been since my son had died. I couldn’t deal with that. I’m barely functioning now and about a month ago I was functioning even worse.
My sister, though, decided to bend the rule that I had made. She bought me a beautiful rose plant that wouldn’t die. It wasn’t just a bunch of flowers. It was something that I could plant in my garden and look after. She told me she bought it so that I would have a reason to get out of bed every day. Even if I just got up to water it and then went back to bed, I had achieved something. I have watered the rosebuds every day since she gifted them to me. I’m so grateful for her.
I’m still coming to terms with the fact that nothing I can do will bring my son back. It’s my job to be there for them, even when I’m struggling to be there for myself. I don’t know how any of us are going to recover from this. I don’t know how life keeps going when our worlds have stopped, but it does. I need to keep going for my boys, and for Sean.