Coping Yes No Maybe - NOT

Coping - today I guess you could say I coped with my grief in an okay manner. I only cried 3 or 4 times and only where people could see me once or twice. As Bo's birthday get closer, I find that I struggle more and more. Not just with the sense of loss, but with sadness, emptyness, longing and sometimes even anger.

Tonight I went to Ian's baseball game and thought of how much Bo and D would have enjoyed watching him make the "play of the game". How they would have cheered him on and how he would have beemed at seeing them there. They were two of his biggest fans next to me. I reflect on all that Carter Dean has lost by the "accident" of a careless man and then I become angry.

Bo and Lori's deaths were an accident and accidents happen, but it is the waterfall effect of that accident that has transformed our lives breath by breath. Jill and I struggle daily to make sense of who we are and how we live without three people in our lives that we thought we would grow old with.

My anger comes from the fact that the person who killed our son is ultimately responsible for D's death in my mind. Yes, D had brain cancer, it was probably there for a year before it made itself known, but if Mr. Benish hadn't crossed the center line that fateful day, D might have lived with it many more years before it reared its ugly head.
His actions were the cause and effect of the seizure that lead to D's cancer becoming an active killing organism.

In my mind I can hear my Mother saying "you shouldn't feel this way now.", but at times I don't know how else to feel. I don't hate this man, I just am angry at what happened and the fact that he has not had the courage or compassion to reach out to us and say he was sorry. To say "I am sorry I killed your child. It was an accident and I didn't mean it to happen. If I could change anything I would." I pray for Mr. Benish and his salvation because I don't know how he can walk with the LORD and not ask D and I for forgiveness for killing Bo.

Tomorrow maybe I will cope better and then again maybe not. Grief has no container, it has no boundaries or time lines and it knows no master. It is it's own ruler. I have learned that to cope I have to feel, respond and then move on.

Tonight, I will close my eyes and dream of all the things that might have been, the missed birthdays, the unseen baseball games, the last kisses and hugs, the lost laughter and the sounds I no longer hear. I will pray for peace for my daughter as her pain is so intense. I will ask for rest in my soul tonight as I ask my FATHER to hold me close as I try to sleep missing my son and my husband with a pain that is as severe today as the day they died.