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Losing Ryan
When I write about the loss of Ryan, I share stories for both myself and to offer a glimpse inside the life of the bereaved. I will never know Ryan beyond the age of 5, yet today I will honor his 34th birthday with acts of kindness. 
Grief does not magically disappear with the passage of time. The loss of our son carries a constant vacancy we are left to imagine. I was only twenty-eight...

It takes strength to make your way through grief, to grab hold of life and let it pull you forward ~Patti Davis
The sounds of life
A crash of disbelief still bubbles up when I think of the loss of my mother. The reminder of her death comes in waves as the lessons of grief return. Joyful memories of the past become the guidepost of my life, a balm to my grief. They provide the opportunity to look...

There are only a handful of pictures of Ryan, five years of memories frozen in time of a little boy who we never saw grow to be the young man of 32 today. These photos stir up moments of the past with a smile and a tear, as I reminisce the life we once shared. 
Pain has a way of blurring the present, making us forget the simple details of a wonderful life. And even though loss is random, I could...

"In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour." 
For over 25 years I have shared stories of Ryan. Stories of heartbreak and sadness, sweet moments and memories and the treasure of pictures where I reminisce in the joy of his smile. But the one story I have never told, the one that has been locked down...

Chelsea, Shawn and Ryan
Chelsea and Ryan on our way back from Hilton Head Island
 "You don't get through it, it doesn't get better, it just gets different."
I used to hate February, after all, my son died in February, and my father died in February. The shortest month of the year and I had to hold my breath just to get through it. 
But the cold and damp of winter pairs well with grief, the...

"Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory" ~ Dr. Suess
 
Funny how a noise wedges into my thoughts like a vise and pries open a memory. Just the other day I heard a man whistling while walking outside, and almost reeled around to see my father. Then just as quickly, that flash of reality pulled me back knowing that sound had been silenced 20 years ago.
While...

Today marks 5 years since Debbie had her brain surgery; Thursday is fifteen years since Joe had his brain aneurysm and one month since our mother passed away and on Friday, I will finally have that MRI doctors recommended years ago. My heart is heavy with all these emotions.
Although I usually attempt to put an upbeat spin on the stories of our life, it’s too soon in this place where so much sadness...

On Thanksgiving Day we picked up several copies of our local gazette and found our story, Pay it forward for Ryan on the front page. A story about giving back, even when you are in pain, in fact, especially when you are in pain. These small steps allowed me to see Joy again.

A lesson during a recent writing course had us return to stories or ideas and rewrite them, a memory from long ago
The dimly lit room
The squalid hallway assaulted my senses with dread and disinfectant as they led us to his room. The outdated space with its cold tile floors and blue ticked curtains shifts my gaze from familiar to foreign while this somber scene unravels before us. 
The cramped...

There are moments which mark your life, moments when you realize nothing will ever be the same and time is divided into two parts: BEFORE this and AFTER this...
My heart took a bad fall...
collapsing everything I once believed while my faith, hope, and future crumbled before me. He was so young, we were so young, so naive to the world, living in a fairytale where there was always happiness and...