Who are we?

What a week last week was! Monday night was the wonderful Play for Mitch event, which I've talked about a little bit already. It was so wonderful to be surrounded by our closest friends and his friends, and to have Mitchell's life remembered in such a wonderful way.

Then Wednesday, his high school hockey team, Hume Fogg-Page, invited us to come to their home opener. They invited us out on the ice before the beginning of the game and gave me flowers, had a moment of silence, and gave all three of us commemorative pucks with his initials and number. All I could think about during that time was that this is as close as I will get to his Senior Night, when the seniors are presented and give flowers to their moms.

Then late Thursday night, I started feeling pretty bad, with nausea and chest pain. Mike ended up taking me to the ER (yes, the same ER I had taken Mitchell to back in early June). I ended up doing a lot of the same tests they ran on Mitchell that night, and of course, that is all I could think about when they were taking me for an MRI, CT, doing Xrays... And of course, the doctors all want to know "family history" so I had to tell the story all over again. With the "new history," they admitted me so they kept me overnight and all day Friday, for observation and more tests. Turns out all the tests were good, and we are all going with anxiety as the cause. When they did the stress test, I wanted to say "don't need a test -- I've got stress, I promise!"

This weekend, I have started an on-line class called "Writing Your Grief", so many of my next blog posts may come from that class. Below is my first assignment. We were asked to respond to a prompt, which is the quotation at the beginning.

"I don't have a name. I don't know what to do. The only thing I know for certain that I must begin to heal. Just like every time my life was re-created, I had to begin restoring the foundered part of my being: the lost relationships, the familiarity of a neighborhood, the sense of the person I might have been." -- David Cristofano

Who was the person I used to be?

Is that part of the difficulty of my grief? Of course it is. It isn't just that Mitchell is gone from my life, our family, our world. Mitchell's death has changed all of us, profoundly. None of us are the same person we were six months ago. Carson isn't a little brother anymore; he is an only child now, but not just an only child, one who used to be a little brother. Mike and I used to parents of two children, of two boys. Now we aren't. Now we are the parents of "only one", but not just the parents of an only child, but parents who have lost a child.

The person I used to be. The worst part of that person has carried forward: the person who was too easily depressed, too easily side-tracked, too easily exhausted. The depression, lack of focus, simply exhaustion has carried with me, magnified by a thousand. The best part of that person: the mom who was so proud of her son, who came to his awards days, rarely missed a hockey game, forced him to do his Awana verses and history projects because I knew he could not only do it, but succeed. The mom who enjoyed traveling with him, either locally to historic sites, to hockey tournaments, to museums, on vacations. The mom who laughed at his jokes, who played games, who simply enjoyed his presence. That person is gone; she left when he did.

The person I used to be. How many times have I introduced myself as "Mitchell's mom"? At school, at hockey. Even some of his friends at school called me "Mitchell's mom". Yes, I am still Mitchell's mom, and I always will be, but without Mitchell, that name doesn't have the same meaning. Before, it meant "the mom of the smart funny kid at school; the mom of the tough hockey player who was one of the hardest workers on the team". Now, it means "the mom of that kid who died." That kid who died. So much of Mitchell's mom died, then, too.

I was so proud of him. Of the student he was, of the hockey player he was, of the kid he was, of the young man he was growing up to be. If pride goeth before a fall, is it my fault? Was I too proud of him? Was I too heart-proud? Aren't parents supposed to be proud of their kids?

So much of who I am... who I was... was tied up in being who HE was. Most of my best friends are the friends of his parents: Jennifer, who we met because he and Taylor had been best friends since kindergarten. Almost all the hockey moms that I am closest to are because he played with their boys. How will those relationships continue? I feel like they will, because they are my tribe, and they are the ones who have rallied around me the most, but at the same time, it will never be the same. I will always be the one at the table who doesn't get to talk about what their son is doing now: what team he is playing on, where he is going to college. That will never end. These boys will graduate, go to college, get married, have children. And I will be happy for all of them, but at the same time, Mitchell won't ever get to do any of that. I will never be Mitchell's mom getting flowers at Senior Night, or throwing his graduation party, or crying at his wedding, or holding his children.

It is almost ironic that I am having this conversation with myself, because I am someone who often prided myself on not totally merging my identity with that of my children. I had degrees, a profession, wrote a book, did things outside of my family, and things for myself. But at the end of the day, my mom-identity topped all those other things. Now I feel like I have no identity at all. I am unable to figure out who I was in those other roles, am unable to do the things that are required.

I am still Carson's mom, but feel like I am failing miserably at that job. Carson and I are close, but Mitchell and I were simply more alike. That doesn't mean I love either of them more than the other, just differently. But I am certainly not doing a good job at being Carson's mom right now. I am too depressed, too tired, too unwilling to participate in life. And frankly, I may be a little afraid at getting too close.

The person I used to be. I am not that person any more. But I am not sure who I am anymore. I don't know if I will ever figure out who I am now. At the same time, Mike and Carson will have to figure out who they are too. And we will have to figure out who we are as a family, and how these three new people learn to create a family that lives in our new normal.