My World Went Dark…

Today marks the 6th anniversary of the day my world went dark.  You would be 32 this year.  Your baby boy will turn 7 in ten days.

The day you were born was filled with hope and joy.  Hope for my future at the young age of 18 and hope for yours.  I held you, my first born baby, and immediately I knew I would never know another love like yours.  Just like I will never know another love like your brothers in the moment I held each one of them.  You settled me.  You became an extension of me.

So wise and so very funny.  You were the voice of reason for your brothers and I, and the voice of risks as well.  You lived life wide open.  You loved the unloved. You stood up for the bullied and stood in the ditch with the homeless.  Your love never saw race, religion, or gender.  Your love only looked at the heart.  You were fiercely loyal to your friends even if their selfishness prevented them from reciprocating.

My world went dark March 21, 2016.  I can feel the anxiety and panic in the air as it rises up in my body.  I vacillated between knowing something was terribly wrong and hope.  

It is as if that day is now in slow motion.  The ring of the phone. Confusion, panic, trying to call you, trying to call anyone who might know where you were. Running over to your house, beating on the door….a glimmer of hope when a friend said you checked into your class at school.

I stood in your yard as the officer pulled slowly through our gate and crept down the drive.  I held my breath.  The car door opened, the officer stepped out.  His mouth was moving, but all I could hear as I dropped to the ground was the eerie wails of a dying animal.  I did not realize the gutteral sound shattering the silence was my own.  The smell of dirt was powerful mixed with tears and snot.

Numb, unable to put a thought together or remember where I put my glasses, looking for my phone while I was talking on it, moving from one piece of furniture to another, lack of desire to live, anger, exhaustion, confusion, my yes’ always looking like good intentions with a cancelation on the end.

It was as if those joyful, sometimes sad, sometimes hard, sometimes not, pieces of our family collided with an oversized fat cat that jumped in the middle of the table and turned it over destroying our family puzzle and spilling it all over the floor.  The violence of the fall reverberated through every inch of my being.

I would wake in the morning praying it was all a bad dream, then I would see the pieces of that puzzle scattered all over the floor.  Debilitating pain would sear my body as my mind reminded my heart the puzzle would never be able to be put together again.  

I could not imagine that there would ever be another puzzle.  I knew the pieces that were left would never ever fill the space of the piece of you but I had no idea, even in grief, it would reshape itself.  Some pieces fell away and new pieces were added.

I ache to hold you.  My tears still spill unexpectedly.  The memories I was so scared I would lose after your death are in vivid color.  I can hear your laugh, your sarcasm, your disgust.  I can see you making faces back at yourself in every mirror you encounter.  I see you in your baby.  He is a Mimi and a Momma’s baby just like you were.  He loves to read, play games and fact checks me often. 

I never knew a heart could break and experience great joy all in the same space until you went home to be with Jesus. I desperately wish you were still here in the middle of all the moments, but I am not sure I would ask you to come back if I could, unless, of course, it was for Jackson and Lauryn’s sake.  I am positive if I did you would laugh that big ole laugh like I had lost my mind.

I know you're whole and living your best life in heaven.  I am thankful for the promise of heaven and that I will see you again.  

I miss you son.

In memory of the first son to ever hear my heartbeat.

Christopher Parrish Barrow

Love,

Mom