Open letter to my son
Son, it has been over nine years since I last heard your sweet voice and it hasn’t been easy. I have lived my life faking happiness, pretending to be ok, smiling at times and often wondering if I was a bad father. So many changes have happened since you died and it hurts to know that you weren’t there for any of them. Often times I have posted words on social media spaces thinking that somehow someone out there cared but as time passed I learned to accept people for who they are. There truly is no easier way to put this than to let you know that I miss you. I miss our time together. I miss holding you in my arms and telling you how much I love you. I miss your sweet laughter and all of the times we laughed together.
Life has been so hard and it has taken me such a long time to accept the fact that you are gone. Not many would understand this grief and why would they want to. Only us the unlucky ones know what this pain feels like. I have been fortunate to welcome 2 incredible little girls into this world who sadly will never get to meet you. Someday when they are older they will learn of who you were. The only time they’ll know of you is when I show them photos of you and tell them stories. It seems so fucking unfair but then again that’s life. Life is one big unfair social experiment. It’s so sad to know that your sisters will never know the true you.
The last nine years have been emotionally and physically draining. I have laughed, learned, lost, cried and so many more emotions. I’ve been lucky enough to see the world which is something I never imagined I would be fortunate enough to experience but I did that without you by my side and it hurts. I had also found relative successes and many disappointments but through them all I carried your memory by my side. Sometimes smiling but often just hurting from losing you.
I carry a lot of guilt and anger for having lost you to cancer. Leukemia came and ripped you from me. I know there was nothing I could do but not a day goes by that I don’t feel hurt about what you went through. The pain. The anger. The loneliness. The tears. The long nights where we didn’t know what the next day would bring. All of this trauma that I have lived with has not been easy. At times I have felt like a broken man. A man who wanted to at times give up on life and the world. Life often felt and sometimes feels like a cloud. As if everything is a dream.
Bereavement is a lonely place especially for those of us who have lost children. It’s a taboo subject that is often swept under the table because most people would rather never face the fact that on this earth there are many people who have felt incredibly painful grief of losing a child.
December 2004
July 2014
I will never forget the day your remains were laid to rest. I don’t think I ever felt more alone or scared. Terrified of what the future would bring and if would have been able to survive the pain. There I stood in the freezing cold above this hole in the ground staring at what was left of you. I was there without a friend, without family, with no one by my side and with only my thoughts. I held back tears and wondered how could the love of my life have left so soon. How could my sweet boy have been taken from me so violently. It just seemed so cruel. Your life ended connected to a thousand machines and died in a way that is just indescribable. I often hold back tears because those thoughts sometimes are just too painful to bear. Sadly the lesson of being there alone taught me that friends are never who they claim to be. For the last nine years I turned a blind eye to friends and family. I pretended to be ok and excused them for their absence. I excused them for not calling. For not being there when you were buried. I lived in this unreal place that just seemed so out of place. Maybe that was just my fate. The same fate that my biological mother stowed upon me when she gave me away for adoption at such an early age. How fucked up is life?
Some might ask why after so many years I decided to finally open up? Well, it’s because my heart and my mind have been feeling the pressure. A lovely friend of mine who runs the Miami chapter to a bereavement group taught me that grief is like a pressure cooker. Pressure builds up and eventually one explodes. This bereaved mother saved my life and I can never thank her enough for it because at the time when I needed a motherly figure to look up to she gave me hope – she was there. I am so grateful for her existence and that she was there when I mostly needed someone to help me. She literally saved my life.
I now need to look for a way to grieve properly. I need to honor your wishes. I need to help children who are sick. I need to do this in your honor. I need to somehow show people that you were not on this earth in vain. That you mattered. That your thoughts mattered. That you were a loving, sweet and beautiful soul who came to this earth to change me. To change others. To make a difference. I want to spread your love and wisdom. I want to help others through your first love – the arts. I guess I had to move 3,000 miles away in and wait almost a decade to find the strength in me to do it. It’s time.
I dream that I can someday be the father you had deservedand the mentor you should have grown up with because by now you would have been a young man ready to conquer the world. You left a mark in me and for that I will always be thankful.
I miss you my Superman. My man of steel.
#wishyouwerehere
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