A Whiskey Lullaby

It had been about eight long months since Cody left us. Eight long months of being a terrible, drunk, grief stricken mother. My kids and I had began to settle into our new lives with just us four. Eight months ago I had a beautiful family. We were on our way to bigger and better things. Now we were broken. Fragile. Lost. For me, it hurt to see other families together doing family things. It hurt to see dads with their kids. It hurt my kids to see dads with their kids. And it especially hurt on Fathers Day when you see kids doing things with their daddy’s but my kids got that taken from them. To this day, it hurts to see that. It actually makes me cry just typing it. Its not fair… and I’m not sure if I’ll ever see it any different.

Eight months of trying to fill the void. Eight long months of crying on a headstone. It’s been eight months since I last knew who I was. It was now Summer time. The first Summer spent without Cody. Summer times were our favorite. We lived our best lives during the Summer. So with Summer now beginning, I just really didn’t see how life could get any worse, or any better. I sort of became like a leaf in the wind. Just going with the flow. Life is not what I thought it was anymore. I thought, if this is my life now… then it is what it is. I started to accept the grief that became apart of me. They say grief goes in stages. Now that I’ve lived grief I don’t think there is any fixed stage to go through. I went through denial. I went through bargaining. And I went through depression. The anger stage comes and goes. I even think the anger stage lingers long after the acceptance stage in a way.

On a Sunday afternoon in May I got a knock on my apartment door. I opened the door to two older Christian ladies wanting to know if they could pray over me and my children. I recognized one of these ladies as the lady that works in the office at Jordan’s elementary school. So she knew exactly what we were going through. I invited them in and they opened up their bibles and read some verses to me. They even had me read some verses out loud myself. Then they placed their hands on my shoulders and began to pray to God. They prayed to God for someone to come into our lives and fill that missing void. They prayed for my children, and my unborn baby. Which struck me because I wasn’t even pregnant! I guess I had developed a “beer belly” and that’s what they were referring to. So now I’m thinking, maybe I need to cut down on the beer drinking…

It was about a couple of weeks after that day. I opened up my Facebook app to check my notifications. I see that I got a new friend request from someone named, Michael. I looked at his profile and thought he was very handsome. So I messaged him and asked him if he knew me since he added me as a friend. He messaged back saying he did not know me but would like to get to know me. So we exchanged phone numbers and began texting each other. I invited him over to my apartment one evening to meet in person after I had put my kids to bed. We watched a movie and then he went home. We came attached to each other quickly and spent most of our waking hours together. We talked for hours on the phone while he worked over night driving truck. He met my kids not too long after and my kids became attached to him quickly as well.

Michael spent so much time at my apartment that we decided he should just move in. It had only been about two months since we decided to call each other boyfriend and girlfriend. I believe that Michael was sent to me by God by the prayers that were prayed that one day. He played ball with my kids. He went to their ball games. He taught Deyjah how to ride a bike. He pushed them on the swings. He played Legos with them. He got inside their blanket fort and told scary stories with them. Michael not only saved me, but he saved my kids. Not only is he a God send named Michael, but he is a man of God himself. He brought me close to God. He made me a better person and a better mother. Michael woke me up. He came to fill that void just like those two ladies prayed for. He doesn’t have kids of his own and he took mine in and loved them like they were his own. He reminded me how precious they are. This filled my heart with the belief that love is the cure. Love cures everything and you won’t be able to change my mind on that one. Love is powerful. Love can turn hate into peace. Power overrides love in many people. Why? Because love was the missing piece during development. And love can fix and fill that gap. Death elects the weak minded. The strong fight a courageous battle and live to not only tell, but to inform. A tornado destroys a small town that had little hope. The aftermath was glorious. A chance to start over new. Build everything according to plan. Adjusting the environment to survival mode. It’s a fight or flight response. Either give up or keep going. You can be brand new if you want to. It’s the effort that counts.

Michael and I were together for a year in that little apartment. We then decided to move out of my apartment and buy a house that us five can make memories in and begin a new life again. Michael bought us a house an hour away from our families. We are still here continuing building great memories and growing into something outrageously beautiful. We did a lot of growing since we lost Cody. I turned my life around and the positive thoughts that I was planting in my head began to sprout and spread so much that I don’t even know how to think negative anymore. My kids are my world. My center focus. The only thing that matters to me. They now have all my attention and love. And I have Michael to thank for that. He turned my head and lead me in the right direction. He picked me up off that gravestone and wiped away my tears. I am so incredibly thankful for Michael and I always will be. Without him, I honestly don’t think I would have realized the damage that I was causing. I don’t even like to think about how or where my kids would be if my life hadn’t changed for the better. It breaks my heart just thinking about the damage I already caused in my children by not giving them my attention for that long depressing year.

On this day, it has been eight years since Codys death. I have accepted that this is the way my life played out. I still get so angry though. Angry that my kids have to know such a raw form of feeling… a feeling that you should never have to feel as a small child. What does a kid do with such a heavy heart? It makes me angry that Cody left our children. It makes me angry that his suicide caused them to be fatherless and that grief is their normal way of life. They don’t get to live that near perfect, “nothing bad happens” life. The worst pain a heart could feel, they felt it on their little tiny three, four, and six year old hearts. I’m not sure if I can ever get past that anger. I have my waves of grief but I learned how to ride the waves rather than drown in them. The waves don’t bother me near as bad as it bothers me when I think about how my kids feel right now as they are growing into knowing what these heavy feelings are. No, it’s not fair that they didn’t get to know their daddy. It’s not fair. You see Cody, when you committed suicide, you put so much pain on us to carry around for the rest of our lives. That’s not fair! You should be here.

Grief disrupts the identity. You lose yourself. I grew from the ground up, a new version of me. I tried so hard to find the old me, but I’m guessing the old me died along with Cody. I lost most of my friends because of this change and it created a lot of conflict between my family and I. They wanted me back. They had to mourn the loss of the old me. If only they would realize that this growth is the best thing for me. If I were to stay searching for myself, I would still be in a dark place, and I always would be because I would never be able to be my old self again. The only way that would be possible is if Cody came back. Which isn’t possible, so my growth is my awakening.

To be continued….