Cause your the only song I want to hear...

Sometimes I feel as though I am still in shock and that my son is still alive. As though we had an argument and we are simply not speaking as opposed to him being gone. We had some really lovely weather this past weekend, a weekend where he likely would have been starting to do some work on his small boat to get it ready to put in the water. I kept waiting on the phone call for him to ask me to help him finance some kind of expensive boat repair. The phone call never came, and it never will.

I am mourning my own loss. The loss of my child, the flesh of my flesh. However, more profoundly, I am mourning his loss. The loss of the life he will never live. He was twenty years old. He will never get married and he will never be a father. He will never again spend lazy weekends fishing on the little boat he loved so much. He will never again go to a concert, or a baseball game. He will never have the opportunity to vote for a president. He will never again have the chance to get dressed up and take his lovely girlfriend to his office Christmas party. He will never stand up as Best Man when his little brother takes a wife. Gone are the days when he will call me and ask to come over and bar-b-que some steaks with his special secret marinade.

The sadness and pain of this loss is more than I can bear most days, and I am thankful for the body's ability to protect itself by keeping me a little bit numb so I can function on some level and get through most days. Sometimes the anger overwhelms the sadness and I want to wage a war against someone. To make a difference. To get this shit off the streets and away from our children. And that is just what I intend to do, one baby step at a time if I must...

Already Gone...

The last few months of my life have been surreal. There is no other word for it. The loss of a child is like nothing I can describe to you. It is pain that you feel to the very depths of your soul. Yet, life around you goes on. You must go on. I still have a mortgage to pay so I still have to get out of bed every day and get dressed. I still have another child to raise so I don't get the luxury of just completely shutting down.

Most people, can not relate to the pain of losing a child. I hear often, that it is the most devastating loss a human being can go through. It is unnatural, unfair, perverse, against nature. I have since noticed, often times, once the initial shock of it wears off, it is easier for those around you, to pretend it never happened, or to pretend you don't exist. It becomes the 600 lb gorilla in the room. I experience this often.

Perhaps I am just becoming cynical, but I often feel that some people could perceive the death of my son as brought on by himself. I have known of at least 2 or 3 deaths by heroin overdose in the months prior to the death of my son. After those deaths, I have also overheard people whispering things like "just another dead junkie".