The Agony of Grieving Mom

January 27, Wednesday afternoon, I received the most devasting call a parent can endure. "Enzo's gone, Mommy." It shattered my world and my once happy, contented motherhood was replaced with unexplainable pain and deep emptiness. With a humble heart, I prayed and prayed for God's miracle to return my Enzo to me. But God's love for Enzo is above and beyond mine. I could do nothing but give back my son to our Creator. The pain of surrendering to God's will is extremely unbearable. My heart exploded with so much grief to the finality of never seeing nor holding him again and the loss of all his hopes and dreams. 

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There is deep and profound loneliness when he returned to our Creator. My world is numb and empty. All I want is to run and hide in my own dark safe place... away from the reality that he is gone to infinity. Days passed fast. Life goes on without him. And no matter how hard they reached out to me, no one can take this journey with me. Even James, my husband, end up on a separate journey of coping. Indeed, he made sure he's always present on my needs but I could not connect. I felt foreign in my own house. I yearn for the missing one.

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Some of my emotions can be shared but there are emotions of regrets and guilt that can never be put into words. I'm scared of the future laid out before me. I'm 40 years old and I will grieve his passing for the rest of my life. How can I be a mother again to Vito? How can I function without the piece of my heart that Enzo took with him? I'm scared of being visibly broken but there are many moments where I felt so suffocated and exhausted that I couldn't cry. I was totally paralyzed by sadness and fear. Honestly, nothing prepares us, parents for the loss of our child, whether sudden or expected. It doesn't matter if our child is an infant, adolescent, or adult, the pain is the same. What I know, I grief immensely because I love him to infinity and beyond. My grief did not end in a week, months, nor even years. And the heartbreaking truth, his passing isn't something I will get over, but something I should learn to live with.  

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The reality of what has happened was very difficult to accept and I have been desperately in search of understanding and dragged with lots of regrets over lost opportunities and unfulfilled dreams of my dear Enzo. Also, I have never-ending thoughts of "if only", "I should have known that day" and "why?". I can’t stop thinking about how much he suffered and my own inability to save him. I am so angry at myself for all the times I was scared of his depression and what it could do to him, and for all the times that our best was not enough as the happy times were few, and his struggles were too many and heartbreaking.

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Having said that, we are beyond grateful for the 16years with my dear Enzo. I would not ask for a different Enzo because regardless of his struggles he fought his best to live happily, doing the things that bring joy not only to himself but to everybody he had come across in his short-lived journey. The love I have for him is not severed but rather reinforced, for it’s not how he died, but how he lived.