Disjointed Time | Diary of a Grieving Mother

When the calendar says a year, but my mind says yesterday.

Note from Mary-Jo:

This one is raw. Only hours away from the one-year mark. My diary entries this past month have been brutal. The writings of living nightmares. I haven't shared them because I didn't think my inner crazed thoughts should see the outside of my diary. But Diary of a Grieving Mother was never supposed to show only the parts of grief that are comfortable to read. And I can't make this one comfortable.

So this is where it begins.

I've been waiting for it. Bracing for it. Pleading for time to just pause for a minute.

Time has been my enemy. Moving too quickly away from the last time I felt his hand in mine. Heard his laugh. Touched his stubbly cheek.

Every day that's passed pushing me one day further from him.

The one-year mark I've been battling against.

Words like, "A year ago today he was still alive."

I won't be able to say that anymore, and it's crushing me inside like a vice.

And time is broken.

I've been feeling more and more disjointed as the looming days won't match the dates.

My mind is serving two different clocks, and neither will yield to the other.

I remember every minute of every day from the moment my phone rang at 3:33 a.m. that Sunday morning, August 17th.

That entire week is not a blur for me.

The trauma didn't erase it.

It solidified it in my memory.

A year later, I still feel the pain of each day of the week.

Sundays are the horror of it happening. Finding out how badly his body was broken. Focused on one thing: How does he pull through this? Refusing to accept the doctor's prognosis and instead fighting.

Mondays are continuing the fight. Watching his numbers rise and fall. Internal panic at every second.

Tuesdays are a ray of hope. A whole lot of prayer. A grasping belief that I would not, could not lose him.

And Wednesdays.

Wednesday mornings I replay the worst moment of my life.

Watching the monitors, knowing there's no way to stop it, and just wanting to be touching him as the numbers fall slowly to one.

Thursdays are always disbelief.

And Fridays I lose him a second time as his life spared four others.

Then would come Saturday.

And the clock starts all over again.

The day we'd spent together at Top Golf, laughing, enjoying being together for the last time as a family. Just to fall asleep knowing the phone would ring in the morning at 3:33 a.m. and start the nightmare from the beginning.

Repeating. Over and over.

If time went by the days of the week, today we'd be at Top Golf.

And tonight would start the one-year mark of being the last time I saw my son with joy in his eyes before he ran out the door to have boys' night.

But that's not right.

Right?

Because tomorrow is only the 16th.

His accident happened on the 17th.

But that would make it Monday, and Monday is all wrong.

I've been triggered by everything these past weeks.

Sobbing uncontrollably.

Everything's a reminder.

The pain is beyond excruciating, and I have nowhere to put it.

Rage has taken hold. Like something inside of me on the verge of eruption.

I've tried everything from moving stone in sweltering heat for hours, to painting, to binge-watching TV trying to block the images, the pain.

There's nothing that will stop the raging hurricane in my mind. The heat building in my chest.

The triggered response to passing a red truck on the road or seeing a young man mowing a lawn.

Every object carries so much weight.

If he touched it, it cannot be thrown away.

His water cup still sits by his bed.

The salt and vinegar chips still next to the cup.

Dirty clothes in his hamper haven't moved in a year.

I CANNOT ACCEPT THIS.

Even now, I write this sobbing because it's Saturday morning.

Today is the last time I can say I saw him smile, laugh, or fake argue with his siblings over their silly Angry Birds golf scores.

Right?

Or no.

That will be tomorrow night?

I can't marry the two timelines.

Sunday morning...

The 17th.

Those two days won't see each other again for six years.

I know I probably sound crazy.

And I don't know, maybe I am.

But I already feel torn to pieces under the weight of today.

It's Saturday.

But the date is all wrong.

This disjointedness of time.

How do other parents do it?

Or is it just me who puts so much weight on the days of the week instead of the dates?

This fight I know I'll lose, whether I'm fighting the calendar or the day of the week.

I can't keep tomorrow from coming.

There has not been a day that's gone by that hasn't felt as though it just happened.

Like time stopped moving, yet around me people keep walking forward.

Now I'm supposed to hear the words, "It's been a year," and somehow survive this new reality that I haven't seen him in a year.

I can't accept it.

I want to sleep through it.

My eyes already burn from the incessant crying I can't control.

This didn't happen.

—Mary-Jo

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From the pages of Diary of a Grieving Mother