Tracy BradshawThank you, Sawyer, for being in my dream this morning. I would like to share with you all that I can remember and my interpretation too… You and I were going on a cruise. I had checked myself in and stepped ahead to turn and get a picture of you checking yourself in by sliding a card much like a self-checkout at Kroger. I hit the button to turn on my phone and tapped the camera app wanting to snap your photo. I was quite puzzled when a picture of Your Uncle Todd popped up on the screen in camera mode. It was his picture caught in midair as if he was in the middle of a big jump. I chuckled at the photo and tapped to return to camera mode as you swiped your card to board the cruise ship. You placed a pair of black framed glasses on the white swim platform and said that you needed to get some things from your room. When you left, I noticed water lapping up on the platform. I worried that your glasses would be washed away. Just as I was thinking that very thought a wave came up and slid across the platform taking your glasses with it. I watched as they began to very slowly sink into the water. I reached for them and they seemed to travel in slow motion remaining just beyond my fingertips. When my arm was completely submerged in the water, I still hadn’t reached the glasses. I thought that you might not be able to see without them and decided that I’d dive in for them. I retrieved the glasses from the ocean water and returned soaking wet and hair dripping. I opened the ear pieces. They were stretched out too far. I recognized them as an old pair of my own reading glasses that I didn’t want anymore and realized that they weren’t yours at all. When you returned you were younger and smaller. You stretched out on your stomach on the swim platform in a tight outfit which may have been a tightly wrapped towel, but it looked much like a strapless dress. I slid my hand under the fabric between your shoulders and felt the soft skin on your upper back. I raised the material and found it loose though visually it appeared to be so snug. My limited interpretation – Since the day you passed away, I’ve been trying to save you somehow. Your love, your memory, your personality, your presence; I cannot allow these things to pass away too. I thought by sharing you via Sawbear I was saving you, but in reality, I was saving myself. Sawbear keeps me going because sharing you through his eyes, heart, and adventures gives me purpose. You left the glasses for me, so I can see what is closest to me. That understanding has been just out of my reach for several years. I had to submerge myself in Sawbear before I could see what saved me. Thanks for the glasses. I love you, Sawyer. I miss your physical presence so very much. Love, Mom |
Category: healing
The Ache of Absence
Rhonda Cooper
Ms. Cooper is a guest blogger. She is Chaplain for Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore, Maryland, and sister to bereaved mom, Reneau Howard, Carson’s mom.
In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone….(Christina Rossetti)
My Coping Journey
Lee Ann Christ
One thing we who have lost children are faced with daily is how will we cope and possibly go on without our child. After our son, Brian, died in 2004 at the age of 22, our lives came to a standstill. We moved in and out of activities with our two daughters, 15 and 18 at the time, and in and out of our other chores, work, life in general, in a slow motion fog. At times, people had to remind us to breathe as we were mostly taking shallow breaths and then deep,deep sighs.