Your Room. Your Bed.
Saturday, September 24, 2011 (4 months, 1 day)
Good morning, WillBilly,
This morning I woke early and went and crawled into your bed. It feels so … here I go again, bittersweet, to lie under your duvet and as I write this it occurs to me that all of my days seem to be measured by the number of “bittersweets” that it holds. Your room is a precious time capsule; everything preserved; your things placed just as you’d put them on May 22nd. Of course, I picked up the towel that you’d “placed” on your floor along with the dirty t-shirt and shorts that to this day I still can’t throw down the laundry chute. It’s not the right time yet and so they hang on your wall hooks; reminders of that day that started out so “ordinary”. The only thing moving are the blades on your ceiling fan and the up and down of my chest inhaling and exhaling and the tears that are spilling from heart, through my eyes and down my cheeks. I ran my hand through my hair and thought that your hair would have felt the same. And I wish more than anything that you were laying beside me and that we were reading a book together, taking turns reading out loud – you a page, me a page, (you looking ahead to see who’d get the shorter pages) like we used to.
Your bedroom, one of your favourite places (and still one of mine), is sacred to us, just as it was for you. It is a room full of WILL, full of you in every nook and cranny from the posters and pictures on the wall to all your things on the desk and makeshift night table, to your favourite stuffies lined up on top of your armoire, to the shelving unit that holds your sticker box, your ski helmet, your gloves and mitts, your ribbons, and trophies and medals and on and on. Your book report, completed the day of your accident still sits on your desk ready to have been handed in on the Tuesday after the long weekend. Those reminders are sad and difficult to look at and at the same time they remind me of the fragility of life, of how you can be here one minute and gone the next. It reminds me that life should be enjoyed moment to moment and so I try. But for now I cannot get out of your bed, I cannot put one foot in front of the other and so now I am sitting, propped up on your four fluffy pillows with my laptop on my lap writing you this letter; my daily love letter; my time with you. The chores I had planned, the yard work, the laundry, all can wait. … For right now I will live in this moment with you.
I miss you Will. More than anything and everything. And, so let’s just sit for a while longer, here in your bed… just you and me.
Love you like a bus,
Momxo
Discover more from Joni Bouchard
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
January 26, 2018
Dear Will,
January can be a downer for many people. It’s been proven. And I get it. But somedays can be bluer than blue… like today. I feel like there’s a dark blue cloud over my head and though I know you’re still sitting on my left shoulder I think this dark cloud might silence even you today. Try as I might I just can’t seem to shake it off. So what do I do when I have a day like this? What can I do? Well…. maybe I just need to sit with the blues. Maybe I’ll give myself permission to sit out today. Surely the world will be just fine with me watching from the sidelines.
I’ll drink tea and reminisce about happier days. I’ll close my eyes and time travel back to the days when our world was perfect and remember all the perfectly ordinary days when you kept me on my toes, kept me running, kept me busy and, on occasion, kept me “unkept”. Ah yes, those days. Those days when I was angry at something you did and I became unhinged. And you could tell because of the deep furrow in my forehead and how my eyebrows would knit together into that horrible, chunky line. This, of course was the precursor to me raising my voice and stomping my feet. AND THEN the way you’d cock your head ever so slightly and not say a word while staring at my eyebrows and then you’d do that thing with your nostrils…. that flaring in and out thing that would make me laugh. You just couldn’t stand to see me angry so you’d turn on your Willy nostrils and watch my frowns turn into smiles and my smiles turn into laughter. That was a brilliant strategy when I look back at it. (Not so sure it would have worked as smoothly as it did in your teen years…).
While I sit out today I’ll think about how wrapped up I could get in things that weren’t important or that I couldn’t control. I’ll think about how much time and energy I expended on stuff that really didn’t matter. And then I’ll remind myself that I did the best that I could on those given days and that all of it came from a place of love. I’ll look at today and remind myself of that very same message. I’ll tell myself that these blue days all come back to love. Because they just do. I’m sad today because I miss you and I’m down and out because I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. I’ll never be ready to say goodbye. And so I won’t. I can’t. I think I never will.
Then I’ll tell myself that no matter how blue my mood you are still the brightest light in my world, my North Star. Grief is a bigger monster than usual today and no matter how dark the blue cloud I will hold on tight to the good things and the good people that care about me. And I’ll hold on to everything that is you.
While I sit on the sidelines today I know and I trust that your little light (and the thoughts of your little flaring nostrils) will pull me out of this blue cloud and that it will dissipate. All I ask, Will, is that you sit with me today. In love. In trust. In hope. Flaring nostrils and all.
I miss you, sweet boy. And I love you so very much. Like a bus, only bigger.
Momxo
Hi again, Willard.
I love your green frog! But something tells me that your room wasn’t always that clean (I can see that giant smile grinning over that one!) and it reminds that I need to thank you (and your Mom) for reminding me that there are more important things than a clean room. I used to get so mad when K & J would leave a messy room (complete with moldy… umm..apples? or is it an old sandwich? …hard to tell) and your Mom would just give me a knowing look and tell me “it gets better”. But it was missing you, Will, that actually taught me to be more relaxed and focus on what really matters. Thanks for being MY teacher. I miss you blue eyes, XO Mrs. F.
Oh, the stuff we learn from our children. Sometimes I wonder if our kids are given to us to make us better people. When I think of all the things they have taught me… Then maybe, just maybe that is true. Thanks for sharing, Lynn. I miss those baby blues too.