Life is weird. And beautiful. But still weird.

I keep thinking of my angel and what I’d give to have him back. And that’s the weird part. I can never have him back. No matter what I do. I just can never have him back. He’s crossed over to a land of no return, at least not physically return. He’s gone. Forever. How weird is that. Someone can be here today and then gone forever tomorrow.

I was reading Jamie The Very Worst Missionary’s blog today to see if there’s any new posts. I’ve loved all the versions of herself that she’s so generously shared with the world. There was only one new post since the last time I read her blog so I ended up reading her old posts. I read her post about losing her son to suicide. And oh my. I read that post when it happened but now that I’m here in the land of “I also lost my partner to suicide” her post read so different to me that I actually emailed it to myself.

I get it now. I get it so well. And she articulated a lot of things I’ve been struggling articulating so well.

If I had a choice, I’d be moving backward. If it were possible, I would go back and I would fix it. I would do better. I would do more. I would do it all differently. If only I could go back. But, the thing is, even if I travel back in time, I don’t know where exactly I would need to land in order to save my son. I mean, not just to prevent his death, but to truly save. him – to protect him from the all the years of pain and suffering and turmoil that ultimately led to his decision to leave us early. I’ve thought about it a lot (Sometimes I can’t stop thinking about it.), but there are so many forks in the long road of retrospect that I just can’t seem to find the one that would change everything.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. Because I don’t get a choice and I don’t get a do-over and moving forward without my beloved son is the only road left in front of me.

So here I am.

I’ve been trying to say those exact words since my sweet, sweet angel passed but I just wasn’t finding the right words. I keep saying the past is frozen. I can’t go back. And what I was trying to explain is that moving forward without my sweet is the ONLY road left for me. There’s no if only, coulda, woulda. There’s just this road on which my partner is gone forever and I must somehow trudge along without him.

I feel backed into a corner. There are no options here. Just one road and I must walk it. I am walking it sometimes without balance or even crawling on it but I am on that terribly painful and hard road anyway.

There are no do overs. I can’t revisit the past and maybe see some sign that my angel has checked out and fix it. He didn’t want to be saved. He made that clear to me in the note he left behind for me. So once again I must swallow that hard pill and somehow find peace in knowing if he wanted to be saved he would have said something. He did not want to be saved.

This grief has dragged me through the mud. It feels like it’s been so long since he passed but it will only be three months on the 26th of this month. So much time has passed but also not so much time. I am still trying to make sense of my life right now on the only road available to me.

I am thankful for people who tell their stories. Though our stories aren’t the same sometimes I catch glimpses of myself in other people’s stories. They lend me their words when mine fail me. Life is weird. It’s amazing but it is also very weird.

There’s no manual for life. No formula whatsoever. We have to figure it out as we go even when the worst things happen to us. Ugh.