Two Years Without My Son

I have tried so many times to put my thoughts together about the last two years without Miles. It's so difficult to even wrap my mind around the concept, the thought, the reality. Two years....really? Has it only been two years because it feels like much less. Yet in the exact same breath it feels like forever since I last held him, kissed him, and heard his sweet voice call me Mom. How can time feel so long yet not so long all at the same time? It's so strange.

Time has become the strangest enemy. It continues to tick, making me move forward. Yet all my heart wants is to go back in time. Back to when my first born child not only consumed my thoughts but my daily tasks of service. But time keeps ticking, our family continues to grow and change and thus we keep moving forward, while part of my mind, thoughts and a large part of my heart stays in the past. I can never let it go, because it's all I have of my son. I don't have recent pictures of him, I don't have any of his school art projects to hang up and consume my refrigerator. There are no new voice mails on my phone or even loads of selfies taken when I wasn't looking. Thus each picture, video, voicemail, artwork even scribbles of his I cherish beyond gold. It's all I have to prove that my son lived because at times my mind tries to play tricks on me wondering if he really was real, or if he was just the best dream I have ever had.

After two years and I finally feel as though I am starting to breath a little again. I mean really breath. It's so hard to even descibe. But when your heart is so broken it's as though your whole chest has been smashed in and you really can't ever fully catch your breathe. Not like you use to anyway. Thus, you never take a single breath for granted, even a shallow one.

As two years have gone by and our family has changed and grown we are feeling time begin to help heal our pain. I truly don't believe that time heals a broken heart, but I think it helps a broken heart.

The strangest feeling has come over me since we hit the two year mark. It's as though I am starting to wake up to my new reality, yes it has taken that long. But I am more and more aware that this truly is my new reality and will be for some time. My son lives in and watches over us from Heaven, while we try our hardest to do God's will here in this mortal world. What God wants from me I don't know, but I know I will strive all my days to figure it out and do it. I am committed to it more than ever.

I have been so blessed that for almost two years in that I have felt my son very close to me. He has sent me many wonderful messages that I have seen, heard and felt in sometimes the most quiet moments. But in the last year it has been more sparse and as we have come to two years I have felt him more and more distant. It makes me sad. Yet I have felt so strongly that he is about an incredible work that I can't wait to hear about one day. I have felt the strongest impressions lately that he is busy and so must I be. Busy serving others and sharing the love of God with others. It's something I have worked hard at over the past couple years, yet I feel it burning within me so strong lately. I have prayed almost everyday since Miles passed that he and I would and could work together on each side of the veil. I feel this as my mission more than ever. So although I don't feel him as close as I have in the past or even as much as I would like to, I feel him in a different way. He is strong, he is loving, he is tender yet he is confident. He is an angel of hope and healing. As his mother I am so proud to call him my son and even more proud to work beside him as we trudge forward in faith and love each day.

Someone sent me a quote that really hit me. It said "The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not 'get over' the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again, but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to be." I completely agree with this statement.