Ok, so you know how in sci fi movies sometimes the energy/life force/spirit of someone will be expelled/stolen/exit from their body in this great big ray of light? Can you picture that? Stick with me here, I have a very relevant point.

The other night I was sitting on my couch (warning, remember that whole overly emotional thing from the other day? Yeah, still living that, so…) when a commercial came on for the new “Where the Wild Things Are” movie. I watched approximately 12 seconds before I burst into tears, which progressed into sobs, which escalated into gasping, hiccupping fetal position moaning and wailing. Why? You might be thinking - because that book has been one of my favorites for as long as I can remember. I sat there and told Joel that I would have gladly read it to him until my voice was a raspy croak and my fingers were bloody from turning pages. I wanted to hear my toddler Joel growl and make Wild Thing noises at me and dress him up as Max for Halloween. I wanted to buy him stuffed Wild Things and have our own wild rumpus, chasing him around the house until we both collapsed in a helpless pile of giggles. I wanted to live the Wild Thing life with my kid and declare him King of all Wild Things. And one lost dream turned into a hundred in a just a few seconds and I had to let them all go at once.

As I sat there that sci fi mental image came to me. That’s what it’s like to lose a child. In the first few weeks the dreams are ripped from you in giant batches, hundreds at a time in that massive light beam – stripped from your heart, leaving you crawling and gasping for air. That’s how exhausting it is to grieve your child, that’s why they say grief is tiring. Because every hope and dream you had is being forcibly removed from you sapping all your energy with them.

Time goes on, and some days it is only a brief shooting light that escapes you as you realize one more thing you will never have with your child. Some days you get to keep all your light, others you lose a lot. But you never give them up willingly. Even though you know they are gone, every single one stolen from you hurts the same, whether they are all at once or one at a time.

The thing that keeps me going is that the light of holding him for just one minute outshines anything that anyone could ever take from me. That one I get to keep forever.