The milestones we miss

I don't know where to start. All I can say is that I've busied myself with decorating and redecorating and working and reading and not allowing myself to think so much of the pain in my heart. I'm totally not writing this for a pity party. And I know that many will say  "This Too Will Pass" and it's just right now it's hurting so bad inside. My heart is broken and I guess I allowed it to happen so it's part my fault.

I never knew there would be a day when my son got married and I wouldn't be there with him, just to see that last milestone every mama wants to see. Maybe if I died or had a terminal illness but I never ever thought he would reject me at his wedding.

I have prayed and prayed about this situation for well over a year and without confiding some details that only God brought to light about a month ago and to respect my son's integrity I won't explain that part.
I only know that this week one day I had a little time to go over to the bookstore and while I was browsing through the books searching for something of encouragement, I heard playing over the intercom a CD by Randy Travis. It was a gospel song and I actually didn't know he sang gospel music. I heard it playing a song called "Angels". I had never heard of it before and I'm pretty up on music as I listen all the time and play the piano sometimes while I'm by myself.

As the lyrics were about angels (and I'm a collector of angels) I listened closer and then I realized what the words were saying and it was like my Guardian angel was singing it to me. I bought the CD called Three Wooden Crosses and for a nearly a week I've been listening to the CD, all 20 songs, back and forth to work and especially number 3 on it, called Angels. It's a very moving song and I hope you can hear it one day. It's about mothers, not as angels with halos or white wings but just plain people who protected their kids and bore pain to bring into the world a child thats loved the moment they put his little body on your stomach. I have all their recorded milestones on simple paper and have their baby clothes saved away, how much they weighed and when they started walking and talking, first words, lost teeth, times I took him to the hospital alot because he was sick alot before the age of 5.

I even started an IV on his little bitty right foot in an emergency in a small county hospital at 3am with a doctor that looked at me and told me I had too. I was the only nurse there that could do it on the night shift that night. His feet were tiny and he was dehydrated with fever and had seizures and the other nurses couldn't get the vein. I said I couldn't do it because I just couldn't stick my kid with a needle.
 Dr Griffin looked at me and said you've got too to save his life. So, me and Dr. Griffin took him to the 2 bed ICU unit and I was so tired but  you just numb out and when your kid is hurting or near death you go to work. I got it in and started fluids and he got better. Thank goodness I didn't work there but about a year later and now they have a bigger hospital and better staffing situation.

 I thought about the time he almost drowned in a pool in Columbia, South Carolina on an overnight trip I took both the kids by myself to visit the zoo. he was only about 9 then.  The ambulance had to be called as he was on the bottom of the pool and an angel, a teacher, dove in the water and pulled him out and I remember running around crying and thinking he would be dead but when he finally came to and coughed the water out he told the EMT's in a rough voice, "Don't worry, my mama always gets this way when I get hurt". The EMT's kinda laughed and that broke all the worry and tension and I stayed up watching him breathe all night by myself, with his sister by him alseep too after that in a dark hotel room. Then morning we went home.

I remember when he was 13 years old, we went up in a 4 seated airplane and we rode in back, holding hands because we both were scared of heights. He just looked at me with his big brown eyes and said over the loud engine "Don't worry, mama, if we fall, I'll catch you, I promise." Boy, he had an imagination because we were waayyy up there. But he kept holding my hand tighter and I knew he just loved me as I did him.

I remember when we flew to Arizona and I finally got my graduate degree, he and Meghan sat over beside us on the plane and it was her first flight and sick she got! But Brandon, he leaned over and looked at me and put his thumbs up in the air when we lifted off the ground. I have a picture of that. BG and I just laughed. He, from day one, made me laugh and cry, but mostly laugh.  I suppose if I tried I could recall quite a bit of stressful times and times that were trying but as mamas I think God made us that way to remember the good parts the most.

I'm no perfect person at all and I sure know I'm not an angel but I know I was a good mama. I'm sure there are better mamas who buy better, new cars for their kids instead of used ones, and pay all their college instead of part, and I'm sure there are parents who spend more time maybe than I did during those teenage years when they just want to go to their room and listen music or text their friends. I'm sure there are mams that didn't have PTSD either. And maybe I shouldn't have been so protective about him not going to join the army but I reacted out of love because I didn't want him to get hurt.

I've maybe'd if'd for a year now since he wrote me a horrible note that broke my heart before he left for Afghanistan. I did not understand at all what promoted that anger but I guess it's hard for mamas to admit their kids don't love them anymore. It's unimaginative. I even thought at a very low point last year that Meghan and Brandon would be better off if I had died years ago and they had a better mama. I don't know.

I don't know what the total rejection thing is about and even though it was painful at Fort Stewart to ask for a hug twice and get denied like I was just a plain stranger I wanted him to know I still loved him no matter what.

Am I angry? no, I'm very hurt and it's really deep. If their intentions were to hurt me, I just ask to please stop, it worked. My heart is in a million pieces right now.
Will it stop my life? No, I have other parts of my life like being a nurse practitioner and wife as best I can through all this.
Did it hurt my own parents? Yes, and it's something that I've had to be in the middle of for quite some time now. I have learned that I can't set their boundaries for them and save the world and that part, I let go.
Do I look back and wish I never had kids? No.
Why?  Because I never knew what real love was until I had children.
It's made me who I am today and this past year has challenged me to what my purpose really is here on this earth. It's helped me to relearn some things I had  many years ago in an abusive relationship called boundaries. It also drew me back to my faith which I had lost through some years of time. It's also made me realize that we should respect our parents more and the experience has put my own father in deepened thoughts in recent months and forgiveness and the words "I love you" which were never spoken between us are now spoken.
The hardest part is not the forgiving but forgetting.
I do know in time they will understand that their future will become one day their past and maybe, just maybe he will understand a little bit of the kind of love a mother has for her son when he sees his first, and feeds him, carries him to school, goes through rough teen years and then the cycle will go on.

Is my heart completely broken right now? yes and I didn't know it would hurt so much to be rejected by children you loved so long and so hard.
I think in every woman, there's always a little girl somewhere and she never dreams that her son will grow up and then uninvite her to his wedding.
Their goal was to crush my heart and mission accomplished.
This is such an important time in your life and I wish I was there to celebrate it with him. To wish him a happy marriage. I'm left with who will stand in my place Saturday?  I guess all along I really didn't have the place I thought in his heart as he had in mine.

I wish for all readers of this blog to never, ever have to go through this with your children. I've cried more in the past month and especially in the past week than I have probably since my first son died. It's just a heart pain that I know will get better but right now I just can't (as someone explained to me this past week) "fake happy" when my heart is broken.
I've kinda got stitchers block right now and I guess I just can't sit still because it hurts more to sit still right now and know my place was so easily taken after all the years of making that first priority.

I share this with you to let you know as friends, this is probably not so much of a 'stitchytime" for me right now. I have either been running constantly or sitting and staring and crying.
I know I have a husband who loves me and supports me and I have Abbie, but nobdy could take the place of my kids. I just wish they thought the same way too.
And as always, as mamas know and say to their kids, "I'm still always here if you ever need me".
I guess for this milestone, I will write, The End.