Update- what now?

How are you doing? Still a really hard question to answer. Its hard to ask too, I’m sure. I may retort with a simple pleasantry. Am I ok? No I’m not. Three and half months does not heal this. We have good days and bad ones. We are not offended when you ask. I can get up and do my routine and that is part of my self care. But this traumatic event has impacted us severely. It’s not ok. But there are other factors that keep up some amount of motivation and give us purpose. Like our son Aidan, who is a source of hope and happiness to us.

My struggle is talking about my children in context. Like when someone asks how old are they? How many children do you have? Or if I have to divulge that Ryan has passed away, I can barely get the words out. Emotions are strange. It’s hard when certain things can set you off. While doing groceries, I walked past a freezer full of kids yogurt drinks and I cried the whole time I as I finished my shopping. Ryan liked those. It’s so weird that we don’t buy certain things anymore. Ryan’s favourite cereals or toys I see in the store can silently upset me. I saw a Dodge Charger on our street one day and it reminded me so much of him. 3 fire trucks went up our street the week before last. It was a weekday right after school. The sirens make me nauseous. My brain thinks is that another child? A car accident caused a huge back up on the main street by our house one morning and there were helicopters hovering for what seemed so long. It gave me the chills. Triggers are unexpected. We have no warning. It comes, we react, we move on. And so the cycle goes. Its constant. It’s still so unbelievable. Lately, even other children around his age can give me a stir. Kids playing in the snow, the sound of their voices at the skating rink, or walking by the house. It’s him, but it’s not. The dogs ears perk up. His head quizzically to the side. And back to normal again. Sadness.

I have moments I recall Ryan physically. I can still feel the bristles of his freshly cut hair. The smell on his winter coat of outside and kid sweat. Cuddling after a shower and him in his fresh pajamas or his favourite fuzzy blanket. Little things that you take for granted. What is painfully stark is the lack of adolescent energy in the house. Shouting down the hall to Ryan to be quiet while he was on his XBox with friends, scolding him to stop riling up the dog who would go into fits of zoomies as they played together, or the echo of Spongebob episodes every morning while he was getting ready for his day. I miss all of that. I wish he would just come back.

As I start to sift through Ryan’s stuff, I pause to look at past report cards, art work, journals, karate progress reports, and pictures. There’s video games, toys, skateboards, clothes, Halloween costumes, his personal things. What are we going to do with it all? I don’t want to be like those movies where they go into someones house and into a deceased loved ones bedroom where it’s completely untouched and preserved like a time capsule 10 years from now. But I also feel like I am protecting Ryan’s prized possessions, which he was so fond of.

I opened Ryan’s camera to look at all the photos he took. He has some great ones including an amazing selfie he took not too long ago. I looked through them again and realized that what I thought were pictures are actually videos he was making for his YouTube channel. There’s one where he talks about his life from birth to the pandemic. He was explaining who he was. I was in disbelief as I watched the whole 18 minutes worth as I had just posted the previous blog about some of our memories of him. It took my breath away. Sometimes it's startling when you see things you’ve not seen before or not seen in a long time. Videos are hard as the person is right there, moving, talking, how you remember them.

That leads me to the future. Things that we were going to do. Plans. Stuff we were working on. We weren’t done. There was still so much to see and do. Do you know that the night we were in the hospital, a quick thought came to my mind? It was a Friday. Ryan had tons of school work to do that weekend. And I thought, very quickly, but what about his homework? And then it went away as fast as it came to mind. I guess that’s not a thing anymore, I regressed. It’s because he had invested so much time to grade 7, a journey I was on with him as I helped him with virtual school each day. I was getting really proficient in grade 7 French. We were both so invested in this school year. It was his best academic performance yet. We worked well together. He trusted me in this area. I miss that too.

Ryan had been gifted some money and he was looking to buy a real go kart. He loved them. He had wanted to take that venture on with Erik. He also spent a lot of time on video games, online with different gaming friends, he made You tube videos, and he had just opened an Instagram account. He was so proud of his desk set up in his room with his gaming things. Everything was placed just so. I asked him so many times if he wanted a phone and he always said no, he was perfectly fine with his iPod. He was always flashing in our face a goofy picture he took and altered or a meme or some silly video of a kid freaking out at his Mom he had found online. If you knew Ryan well or drove past the house, you would know he was famous for sitting on the step filming cars with that iPod waiting for the most primo car to come by. Ryan even created a following. Drivers that knew his passion would rev as they drove past, even if Ryan wasn’t out there! He could hear it from his bedroom. But he was getting really confident with using technology and it was fun for him. He edited all of my Run club videos from a clinic I ran last spring at the gym.

So what now? Everyone wants to know, what are you going to do? What’s Erik going to do? Are you working? Is he? I resigned from my sales rep job. It’s kind of folks to ask us but if you were to truly transplant yourself in our shoes, what do think your answer would be? If one of your children or your only child was suddenly gone. Where do you think you might be in life? Seriously. There is no plan for this and there is no single answer. We will get there as we go through our grief. For those of you who are parents, remember how you thought you knew what you were going to do and not do once you had kids? But then reality kicked in and all of a sudden you are feeding your kid McDonalds and letting them be on their tablet all day? That’s the same with grieving. You can envision whatever you want about how you ‘think’ you might be in a bad time. But I will tell you, grief has some very domineering aspects that you have no control over. I am not the same no matter how hard I try to go back to the way it was before. The best way I can describe this is I am on two paths. One is the day to day, life functioning one. The other is the back road that you don’t see. Its bumpy, unpredictable, not an easy road. It runs parallel to the day to day path but it is not as visible nor does it run in a straight line. Sometimes navigating it is upsetting and hard. It’s also exhausting. Grief washes over you in waves. At times when you just least expect it. Its not always tears either.

For now, the things I like to do are being with positive people, helping people, self care and focusing on coping. When I had a stressful career, I would yearn to do what I’m doing now. Which is working somewhere that brings happiness, keeps me strong and helps others. That is a win. I’m optimistic but I’m so sad. I’m open and accepting change. Simply, I’m just trying my best.

An awesome selfie. What a nice surprise to find it.