A few years ago, I was preparing for an audition and I came across this song:

It’s from the Broadway production of Little Women. I don’t think I have ever cried so hard while listening to music. (We are talking the snotting, red-faced, UGLY CRY, people.) It stayed with me for a very long time for a lot of reasons. It may sound a bit strange but to me, it PERFECTLY captures a lot of my feelings and thoughts about the son we lost at 4-months from SIDS.

His anniversary is coming up very soon.

Since he died, late August to early October has always been the most horrible time of my year.

It’s just a very horrible time that takes me to some very dark places.

The aftermath of his death was traumatic.

His loss was horrible and so very wrong.

He was so young.

I had 108 days with my Matthew.

That is not a long time.

I have spent infinitely more time mourning him, in fact.

While this means that I have less of an active hole in my life as far as random memories that pop up, places that are painful to visit and things like that, it also means that well….I don’t have many memories.

And that is difficult for someone who thrives on memories of loved ones.

As few memories as I have of him I have even less photos. He had only just learned to smile so I only have one very crappy photo of him smiling, but I am so very grateful for it.

The fact that I have little memories and photos of him just…hurts.

So, I often let my mind wander and have all sorts of imaginary adventures and journeys with my sturdy red-headed boy. We go everywhere together…the park, the zoo, chasing butterflies in golden hayfields. (It seriously doesn’t matter that I rarely chase ANYTHING, let alone in a hay field. It’s fun in my head. Trust me.)

This song almost took my breath away with how familiar it felt.

Then I got to the end and I flipping LOST IT to a spectacular level with this phrase: “All my life I’ve lived for loving you. Let me go now.”

Because there is no way I could let Matthew go.

COULD NOT.

WOULD NOT.

The thought of that years ago was simply unimaginable.

Because to me it meant that I didn’t love him.

And oh, I loved him so.

His loss almost broke me utterly.

And that was how I thought it should be.

I don’t deal and cope well with loss in the first place, let alone the loss of such precious little thing that was my boy.

To me it felt like IT SHOULD HURT FOREVER.

So, I wrapped myself up tight in that dark, miserable and hopeless loss year after year.

But holding on to Matthew and holding on the hurt, anger and sadness that is his loss are two different things. It’s something that seems so logical and separate when I type it but it certainly didn’t feel like different things for the very longest time.

Slowly over the years, things have gotten easier in the day-to-day sense.

I am not sure when I truly started to turn a corner but I think it started with the birth of my sweet little pat of Butter, Aaron. Having another child has just been the joy of my life.

He made me feel happiness in places I thought were dead and gone.

He gave me hope.

He makes me smile daily.

But really, it’s been this last year where I have really come far, I think. I am not really sure why, I just know that this year FEELS SO DIFFERENT.

Many things have helped heal a lot this year.

I had THE most miraculous event in September happen when I went out in pajama pants to get a Diet Coke and ended up helping my sister-in-law deliver her baby. (Seriously…how often is it that you unexpectedly help bring a little life into the world?)

I think it also helped to go offline for a few months. I faced an awful lot of demons in all the quiet and solitude and came to terms with things I simply wasn’t ready to face until my hand was forced and I just had to look it all head on and deal.  It felt awful going through it, but I came out on the other side SO much better and healed things I thought might be beyond saving.

It was good.

Then it got better.

And then something happened that made me pause and think about things.

I forgot the anniversary of the passing of my best friend’s baby girl, Emma last month.

Emma’s anniversary is exactly a month to the day (same year, even) that I lost Matthew.

August 23rd, 2003 and September 23rd, 2003.

We should have one beautiful 8-year-old girl and one handsome 8-year-old boy running around playing together.

And we don’t because they died a month apart.

So.

It shouldn’t be a hard date to remember and I have never forgotten it before. In fact, I usually feel a deep, sad melancholy, not just for my friend but for myself as well.

I just don’t forget that date.

But I did this year.

There was so much going on, the boys were sick, I was exhausted and doing a lot of single parenting and I was recovering from the hell that was oral surgery. And even when she hinted at it, I SIMPLY FORGOT.

I did (and still do) feel HORRIBLE.

But.

When I remembered and freaked out and called her apologizing and continued to kick myself during a follow up conversation with a friend that basically consisted of “OMG, I SUCK SO MUCH FOR FORGETTING!”, a point came up that there was a point in all that feeling horrible and guilty that I had to acknowledge.

I was ABLE to forget it.

That may sound weird but it’s true. It meant that while I will probably be apologizing to Kim until the end of time, my head was able to move past thinking about suffering and loss of that kind in a way that just wouldn’t have happened before.

And while I was kicking myself during this conversation, I allowed myself to utter something I had never said out loud before. I never said it because I felt it was the ultimate betrayal to my son.

But…

I am tired of being SO sad.

So downtrodden.

So hurt and grief-filled this time of year that I pretty much stop functioning for a month every September.

And once I actually said this in front of someone and they didn’t recoil in horror or act like I was a horrible mother, a huge weight lifted off of me.

And I started thinking hard about how good it felt to let go for a moment and all that came with that.

See, I have also been afraid to let it go.

This almost ritual-like pain has become as familiar to me as my own shadow and relinquishing it is actually frightening, if that makes sense. It’s been years of feeling it, and I have held fast and tight to it until it’s been absorbed into my identity.

This is the time of year Loralee is sad.

The end.

But that ritual and hanging on to it as I have has ultimately hurt me and my life.

Badly.

And while I know I will always have rather large ups and downs,  I’ve come to realize that it might not have to be QUITE this way anymore.

So, I decided to not try to force anything. To just see how I feel coming into this month. To not welcome grief with open arms of expectation but to try to welcome happiness, laughter, joy and enjoyment along with any tears I might have.

And I hunted down that song that had caused me so much pain a few years ago and listened to it and marveled at how differently I felt about it. Sure, it’s still sad to me but I can still breathe listening to it.

The thought of letting go isn’t nearly so awful and frightening.

It’s been an interesting process.

As his anniversary inches closer and I am doing better than I ever have at this time of year. Yes, I have had some pretty difficult moments and times that I have felt almost like I am being tested. We went to the mortuary we used for Matthew for a funeral for the first time since we dressed him for the funeral. And let’s face it, Sept. 11th was no picnic.

But over all, I have never felt so well during any of the previous eight Septembers.

I’m sitting here, in a hotel room in St.Paul Minnesota, ready to open an amazing conference that I have worked very hard for for a very long time tomorrow.

And I am ready to simply enjoy it and have a happy time, despite the time of year.

I don’t want anyone to mistake me or think I am suddenly all “WHEE! DEATH!”. That is simply not the case. I know his anniversary and loss will always be hard and sad and I know that the 23rd will leave me hurting mightily.

But…

I don’t have the same crushing weight this year.

I don’t feel all the pain I usually do.

My grief is gentler this year.

I think….I think I am ready to let go and feel a little bit better.

Happier.

Finally.

And I am so glad.

Because that is what living is for.

I’m about to spend a large amount of time traveling.

Which means I will be spending a large amount of time listening to my iPod.

And I realized today that I am entirely sick of my current selections on it.

So, tell me…what songs are on your dream playlist that I should put on my iTunes purchase list before I leave?

I’m (almost) up for anything.

Have at it.

As many of you know, I live in a wee little house full of not-so-wee-nor-little boys. Even Butterlump, who definitely IS still wee (thank goodness) is huge for his age.

I am the lone aisle of estrogen in a sea of testosterone.

While I did hope for a girl with each pregnancy and felt a whole lot of sorrow and loss when I realized that it probably wasn’t in the cards for me since I seem to be married to the world’s only single chromosome male, I love being the mother of boys.

LOVE.

All mothers should have the sheer joy of having their heart break into a thousand pieces from the sheer adorable of being presented with a bouquet of dandelions in a grubby little boy hand and and  be told, “Mama…I marry you?”

Seriously…you do not get better than that.

There are a lot of things that I knew I would be concerned about and had an action plan for with my boys. Like instilling in them the sheer importance of the sibling relationship. My two older boys are half brothers, but they absolutely do not think of each other that way. They are worst enemies but also best friends and they absolutely have each other’s backs.

However, there were many things about raising boys that I just wasn’t prepared for.

Like Cub Scouts. (It really just is not my thing.)

Or the fascination with all things Manga and Anime.

Or the fact that at some point my boys would probably start sneaking their sheets into the laundry. (NO. WE ARE NOT GOING THERE. BECAUSE MY BRAIN MIGHT EXPLODE. FOR REALS.)

Or the fact that BOYS ARE SMELLY.

And let me branch out into that one as it is my current frustration.

Because OH MY FREAKING FRACK DOES IT SUCKASUCKASUCKASUCK.

While we are trying like the Dickens to be out of our small house as soon as possible (It’s on the market, but y’all know what shape THAT is in right now.) I am still stuck sharing one bathroom with one teenage boy, one tween boy, a potty-training-toddler boy and one very tall and big husband. Though he is definitely a man and NOT a boy.  Still, that is one girl sharing a small bathroom with FOUR BOYS.

(I know. You all want to be me.)

And as my boys get older, despite the regular “use good hygiene, dude” and use of deodorant, areas of my house smell more and more like a freaking locker room.

I think I have probably purchased my weight in Clorox and Fabreeze lately.

However…I had ALMOST come to terms with this when I was thrown a curve ball when teenage boy came home with a gift from his father.

ENTER THE LIBERALLY APPLIED TEENAGE BOY COLOGNE PHASE.

I guess I knew that at some point cologne would enter the picture with my boys.

I mean, I was a young girl once. I also had impaired teenage judgement that caused me to burn my face off nightly by  slathering my skin with Noxzema followed by a Sea Breeze chaser and pour an entire bottle of SunIn on my head in junior high. (Hey, it was the 80′s. I also thought stirrup pants and layered legwarmers were flattering.)

I was also around young boys.

I know the whole ‘boy cologne’ thing. (You are talking to a girl that used to have sleepovers with her best friend and one of our favorite passtimes was spraying a pillow with our boyfriend’s cologne and slow dancing with it in the dark to emo 80′s prom tunes.)

(Yeah. I know.)

Dork as I was, I loooved it. (AND WE ARE TALKING OLD SPICE HERE, PEOPLE. I am not trying to shield myself from the sins of my youth.) I imagine as we age, our smell receptors are much like our taste buds in the fact that we outgrow the things we thought were groovy when we were kids. Like the fact that I no longer think that the gates of heaven are made of Count Chocula cereal.

So, I have tried to be patient, but seriously, y’all–I may die of asphyxiation. My main problem is that I have a small house and one small bathroom and since James has the earliest call of the morning and gets it first, I would prefer not to have to have it smell like an Axe Cologne Bomb assaulted it every morning while I’m getting ready for my day, ya know? It permeates everything. It’s like the cockroach of the cologne world…YOU CANNOT GET RID OF IT. IT WILL BE THERE AFTER NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST WITH TWINKIES AND CHER.

Nothing seems to convince him that LESS IS MORE.

I was beginning to think that I was just doomed until maturity advanced when I had a ray of hope.

Enter one very curious and destructive-to-all-things-tornado known as “Butterlump”.

He emptied his brother’s entire bottle.

*hack, hack, cough, cough*

After I opened every window in the house and brought in fans and fled the house in escape from the face-melting fumes, I started to look at the positives of the situation.

He didn’t have anymore cologne.

And my mind went from there.

And OOPS! I am so sorry! I totally forgot to pick up some more while I was at the store, son! I’ll…uh…put it on the list for the…um…future!!!!

Rinse.

Repeat.

And then buy him more expensive and less odorific cologne for Christmas.

And for a blissful 3-days I actually thought that my master plan would be successful.

Then James came back from celebrating his birthday with his father.

He was carrying a brand new black duffle bag.

“HEY, MOM! LOOK WHAT DAD GOT ME FOR MY BIRTHDAY! I CALL IT MY “AXE BAG”. A WHOLE BAG FULL OF COLOGNE AND COLOGNE FILLED PRODUCTS SO THAT I WON’T RUN OUT FOR YEARS!”

Oh, goody.

I guess I can always hope that the newness of it and his excuberence dies down.

And if not…I always have his driver’s licence to use as leverage.

If you need me, I’ll be the one over in the corner with the noseplug contemplating my next post titled “When THE Hell Did I Turn Into The Fuddy Duddy Mom That Threatens Driving Privileges To Get Her Way?!”