Waiting: Life on Hold after Loss

    I wait for answers, for change, for what I don't know.  The concept of  waiting struck really close to home for me with a Hallmark TV Channel movie this evening.  It was about a woman in World War II who said goodbye to her husband on Valentine's Day, their  wedding anniversary.  He never returned from the war.  MIA.  Every year on Valentine's Day she would return to the train station and wait.  She had gone on with her life, but yet she waited.  As do we all in a way, maybe not consciously.  But, we wait.

     I wish I had a place to wait.  To wait for my son, Chris, to return.  To hear, "Hey Mom," again.  To wake up from a nightmare.  To come out of this parallel universe where parents have lost kids to the regular world of regular parents.  To wait for our time to re-join our children in eternity.  To wait to come out of jumping over the chasm of our world of loss to everyday life.  To wait not to be fragile, but to be a tower of strength.

     It is very hard, each day or some days.  But very hard.  A struggle.  Days or times of grief can come out of the blue.  I sobbed at the beginning of this movie.  I realized how much I miss my Chris.  How hard life is without him and his father.  I know I fill up my pain with food.  Things are made much worse as I have so many regrets about the circumstances surrounding Chris' death.  I came home to find Chris gone.  A note was on the kitchen table saying he had fed the dog.  Nothing else.

     He died alone in a small town by himself in the back yard of the young woman I believe shot him.  He was six hours away from home.  In what I regard as a rotten wasteland of a place in western Pennsylvania.  At times, I am tortured by thoughts and images of what his final moments must have been like.  Did he choke or gasp for air or cry out in pain?  Instead of comforting him this young woman along with someone else cleaned up the shooting scene so a proper investigation could not be done.  She was not mentally ill, but evil.  The product of an evil, corrupt politician father.

     Why do I wait and he was spared?  Why does it seem evil triumphs over good so many times.  Especially in backwater places with inept, inexperienced and corrupt police officials and medical examiners who have forgotten they were sworn to uphold the law.

     Now I am alone to wait for my life to feel better.  The young woman teaches elementary school for her local school system.  A job no doubt arranged by her father who kept all her actions quiet, especially after the state fired her for her conduct.  I wouldn't want her teaching my young child or grandchild.      

     There was never any phone call from the hospital, no call from the local township police, no call from her or her parents.  My local police called the medical examiner who told me not to blame myself and do my best to get over it.  Really.  I wonder if that is what he would do or her father if one of their children got shot and killed.

     Tonight I feel no acceptance or forgiveness.  Only anger and hatred.  God is supposed to see everything.  Perhaps what goes around comes around.  Yes, at this moment, I hate this young woman, her parents, those police and that medical examiner.  I hate the availability of guns.

     With almost daily school shootings, how many more parents will go through what I have been through?  I feel no compassion for this young woman or her parents tonight.  Only for you who have lost your children.

     Yet I know I have to pull it together and wait for a better day tomorrow.  I better pound some pillows and wait for exhaustion to overtake me and anger and hatred to leave me.  More waiting.