There is a cloud of melancholy surrounding my snug little cottage* tonight.

For the last few weeks it has been quietly seeping in through the cracks in the mortar and inadequately sealed windows till it hangs thick in the air like smoke from cookies burning in the oven.

There is something about Christmas that makes you yearn for loved ones. Even though the holidays can try the patience of a saint, if you have those you truly love with you the moments of joy can be so very sweet. When you are separated from those you love it is like there is a missing chunk in those moments of joy where that person is supposed to be. You always wish that they were there with you, celebrating and sharing the joy.

When death is the thing that separates you the pain can be acute.

Christmas is always difficult when you have lost a loved one. Getting through the season is hard enough when you don’t do anything to make it worse on yourself or your family. I did that very thing. In a pretty big way.

I forgot about him.

Forgot about Matthew, my sweet Little Bug.

For the very first time in four years, I didn’t go to the cemetery on a holiday.

While I cannot bring myself to visit his grave site very often, I always take something to him and visit on every holiday. It is my way of loving on him and feeling like my little family is still together in some way. Sometimes family is with me, sometimes they are not; I don’t require anyone else to go with me to the cemetery. Every year, I traipse through the snow and ice and unearth his headstone, lay a wreath or a tree down, sing to him and tell him that I miss him.

OH, how I miss him.

It didn’t happen this year.

What makes me feel worse is that very late on Christmas Eve night I remembered and I thought to myself, “We’ll stop with the family on our way over to Brigitte’s for dinner and games.”

It didn’t happen because I forgot.

I FORGOT.

I forgot because I was happy.

The last two Christmases were spectacularly hard. I was basically numb for the first two years but it caught up to me and struck with a vengeance. One day I will write about them, but today is not that day. Let’s just say that I looked into the face of hell and I am not entirely sure why or how I am still here.

This year was better.

On Christmas Day I was enjoying myself, my family and friends.

It came and went and there he lay, all alone.

Totally forgotten by his momma.

I am six hundred different kinds of suck.

Now that the holiday is over, I can feel the full weight of it and feel terrible. I’m sitting here creating my own little thunderstorm with big, fat tears spattering all over my keyboard and sniffing and honking into a wad of tissues. At times like this, it is like a war in my head and my heart. There is the side that has so much self-hatred and guilt for “Letting this happen” and the side that knows that I loved my son and would give anything to have prevented his death if I could. I would lay down my life for his without even batting an eye.

It’s an exhausting struggle at times. Sometimes the self-loathing wins, sometimes not. More and more over the years the self-loathing gets beaten up and put away. The last four Christmas’s have been hell on earth and I know in my head that I shouldn’t beat myself up for being happy enough to let the pain go for the holiday’s. That Bug wouldn’t want that for anything.

My head knows it.

Try telling that to my heart, somebody.

I feel things deeply. I also hold onto painful things much longer than I should. I know it sounds odd, but it is like letting go of that horrible pain is letting go of HIM. The loss of my Little Bug was so awful, so traumatic, so final. It feels like it SHOULD hurt forever. That each and every day SHOULD SUCK FOREVER AND EVER, AMEN.

It’s been 1,558 days since the worst moment of my life.

I’m tired, people. Tired of the hurt, bitterness and anger.

Worn out from wishing that my life were different.

I feel very alone right now.

Except…I know in my heart I’m not.

I have family that LOVED my little one almost as much as I did. I have the most awesome friends in.the.whole.freaking.world. It takes extraordinary people to hold and cling onto me in the flames of the craziest, most destructive hell imaginable. They are all still here. Unbelievable. My gratitude to everyone in this paragraph is unending and indescribable.

And then there are you lovely people. My bloggity family and friends. The most helpful thing for me is that you are here 24-7 for me to pour out my heart to. I need that. Oh, how I need that. Things like this build and build inside me and having the ability to write my thoughts out here have helped me more than you know.

I have snotted in person to a few kind people who are very understanding. I have poured out my heart on the phone to a wise soul and my sister in name and spirit.

I have had so many email exchanges that have truly warmed my heart and even made me chuckle in sincere appreciation when you said that you hurt so much for me after reading my archives that you had to watch “SuperBad” at 1 am so that you could recover and sleep. (Humor is sometimes the only thing that makes me feel better. She gets that.)

These hugs of comfort in my inbox are so appreciated.**

I have also taken some comfort knowing that there are other people out there like me. Even if I just lurk on their blogs it is a comfort to know that there are people that “Get it”. That seem to mourn in similar ways. One that is particularly wrenching is another blogger who lost her “Little Bug”, too. These people don’t just kindly sympathize. They empathize. They know exactly what it is like to have that kind of fear and loss. To be in this horrible, exclusive club that nobody ever, ever wants to be a member of.

No matter my raging anger and bitterness that I have (OH, how I have it), I am eternally thankful that I have all this love and caring around me. Many days is the only armor that I have against the never ending hurt that seems to go on and on. I am doing so much better than I was and hopefully, more love and happiness will seep in and replace so many of the ugly wounds that I have on my heart.

I know that my son forgives me for forgetting him.

I will have to find some way of forgiving myself for this lapse in memory.

On a bigger scale, I know that one day, one day that is NOT today, I will work on forgiving myself for failing to protect him from things I had no control over.

One day at a time.

*If you can equate a 1918 bungalow built by cowhands in their spare time as a snug little ANYTHING.

**I know there are so many more of you. PLEASE forgive me for not putting everyone on here. My husband is starting to bitch at me to help him clean the house.

I visited my son’s grave today.

There was no special reason. No holiday or anniversary. No family or friends that live far away who wanted to pay their respects. I was just driving and saw the snow on the ground and wanted to check on my son, clean up his grave, and remove the decorations that I put up for Autumn.

Matthew is buried in a beautiful spot. I will be buried near him, but not next to him because that space is occupied, which makes me very sad.

It used to make me angry.

Until today.

The cemetery sexton told us that the grave right next to my son was donated and the family doesn’t have the resources for a headstone. There is a metal marker that has an index card with typing on it. The woman’s name has been obliterated. All I know is that death occurred in July of 1998 and that she was only 41 at the time of passing.

It’s hard not to think about “Her” when I visit the cemetery. She makes her presence known. That marker is quite close to Bug’s headstone and has very sharp corners. I don’t think that there has been a gathering there where someone’s pants, legs or coat don’t get ripped on the edges of that sharp, cold metal.

I also notice her because she has never, ever had one flower or sign of visitation in all the years I’ve been going to see my Little Bug. Though bitter and angry that she was occupying such a treasured spot, I began to be curious about this neighbor of my son.

To care.

Who was she? What was she like? Did she have any family? Why was she so abandoned?

It made me feel so bad for this woman.

For “Her”.

My family felt bad as well. So now, whenever we decorate or bring things to Bug, we put a little something on her grave, too. It’s the least I can do for someone who will lay next to my little one for all time.

It has come to give me a little comfort in a place and situation that is terrible.

Many people get comfort and peace visiting the graves of their loved ones, but I don’t.  So, I don’t go to the cemetery often. It is not that I don’t WANT to go, I do. Because I miss my son. There are times where my desire to go and be in the same proximity of where my baby boy is is so overwhelming that I’ve gone up in the middle of the night in my pajamas, just to lay down on the grass and cry.

Being there is very hard on me.

I am a highly tangible person. When Matthew died, I ran around like a crazy person buying duplicates of every toy, blanket and special outfit I could find. Because I wanted him to be buried with the things that he loved in life, but I could.not.part.with.them. I needed those things to hold, cuddle, smell and cherish.

It’s hard for me to visit the place where he is buried because it is horrible for me to picture what has become of the little body that I loved and watched over. It’s hard to be there freezing and shivering and not freak out because I, his mother, his protector, can’t do anything to make him warm. I know it makes no sense. I know that he can’t feel anything, but BABIES ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE COLD.

Not MY babies.

Not on MY watch.

Going to see him at this place, this tangible reminder of the worst day of my life, is hard to do. To get through it I take comfort in whatever I can, whenever I can.

And today?

I got a little bit.

I parked my car, walked to Bug’s grave and saw that someone brought flowers to “Her”.

Someone remembered she was there.

Finally.

Even better? There was a card. Maybe I shouldn’t have read it, but after so many years and so much wondering, I had to know something about her. It was a simple statement written on the back of a Winnie the Pooh florist card:

“Mom, We love you and miss you dearly- The 4 of us are all here together for the first time at your grave since July 9, 1998. Love, Michael, Angie, Tony (Dad), Brandy”.

It made me ridiculously happy. While there is still no first or last name that I can give to “Her”, I know that she had the best name ever: MOM.

She had a family. Loved ones. People that loved her and cared about her and missed her. People that I could see, for whatever reason, were not able to watch over her final resting place and tend to her as they would like to.

Looking at that card I felt so much of my anger and resentment disappear.

I felt hope and gratitude, both things I have not felt in a very long time.

Hope that I CAN get through this.

Gratitude that even though it was only for a very short time, this wonderful, beautiful, AMAZING spirit that was my son…my Matthew…was MINE.

I got to be his MOM. The best word in the world.

It is something that I had almost forgotten in my layers of dark, unending grief.

“Her” and her family helped remind me that the joy of being Matthew’s mother can NEVER be taken away from me.

As long as I draw breath and have family, my child’s resting place will not be forgotten, but cared for and loved and watched over.

So will “Hers”.

I’ll make sure of it.

I am a sentimental person. I think this is compounded by the fact that I have always feared loss. I place huge value on things as a way to hold on to the things that they represent.

It was pretty acute when I was younger. When I would lose a pet, I was devastated. If the situation was traumatic enough (We had to have a dog put down for biting my best friend) I would have hysterical sobbing fits years later. It was like it had just happened and I would feel crushed by sadness.

Obviously, this was not limited to pets. People were pretty big on my list, too.

Because there is such an age difference between me and my older three siblings, they were mainly moved out of the house when I was still pretty young. I missed them. I was lonely for them. I had an especially close relationship with my sister, Melly when I was small. I think I looked on her more as a mother figure and used to follow her around like a little duckling. She left to New York to nanny for a year when I was five.

I used to sit by my window at night when I was lonely for her and wonder if she was looking at the same moon I was looking at. She came home after a year, but moved out again soon after to go to college and marry. When we would visit her or my brother and his family out of state, I would cry hysterically when we had to leave them to come home. I didn’t handle it very well, I’m afraid. Luckily, my sister, Linny, stayed in the same state and that helped.

While the severity of these reactions have mellowed with age (Unless we’re talking about significant separation or loss of someone I love. THAT remains unchanged.) I am still sentimental when it comes to objects. I cling to letters, cards, memento’s, gifts, really any “Tangible” thing that is tied to a person or memory. I think that this is one reason I am a “Gift” person. It is love, feeling, memories and emotion wrapped up into an object. When those objects are lost or damaged I take it pretty hard.

So…What is the point of me spewing about all this sniveling and greeting card hording?

I have a parenting problem that I SHOULD understand and know how to deal with and I just don’t know what to do. We have a couch and love seat in our living room that we’ve had for about 4 years. The boys l0ve them. That is part of the problem. They have loved them to death. My mother in law is renovating her basement and offered her set to us so that we wouldn’t have to buy new furniture until we build our house.

Christopher had the biggest meltdown I have ever seen. Gut wrenching, horrible sadness. It went on ALL NIGHT. He wanted me to take photos of the couches and was absolutely crushed that he would “Never, ever see the good little couches again.”

He was absolutely inconsolable.

I have noticed this in the past. Remember last Halloween when I held a funeral in my pajamas for A BALLOOON? He is also very tied with “How long” he has owned an object. When he broke a red plastic ruler a few months ago he came unglued with sadness, “I’ve owned that since KINDERGARTEN, Mom! That’s over half my life!” He cried and cried and cried.

He does it with most of the objects, photos, and drawings that he has. He ability to remember everything is astounding to me. I feel really helpless on how to help him through these moments here, people. I want to comfort without going overboard or making it worse.

I told Christopher that he should think about how much fun he and his brother had on the couches and that should be his focus. I told him that we already had so many photos of the couches and that if he was still sad the next day we would look at some of them.That it was ok to be sad, but to try to focus on the good things “But, M-m-m-om! Then I would be forgetting our poor, old c-c-c-c-c-oooooooowwwwwccccchhhhh!!!! WWWWHHHHHAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!”

Finally after four hours of this, I told him kindly but firmly that he could not do this anymore and that he had to stop. I not only could.not.cope anymore, he was also crying so hard I was seriously afraid of him swallowing his own tongue or something.

I know that some of this is probably tied to him losing Matthew. He took it very hard. I also think that it has a lot to do with his personality.

Has anyone gone through this with their child? Ideas? Suggestions? Anything I can do? I just need to know how to help him through it because it about kills us both and it seems to be getting worse.