TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT

How eerie that in this past week, I spoke to two good friends, both of whom had lost their adult sons and I finished reading Elizabeth Edwards' book, called RESILIENCE, in which she, too, lost her 16 year old son.  I don't mind telling you this gives me an uneasy feeling, as my son, whose birthday is just around the corner, and I are unbelievably close and adore the living daylights out of each other!  If anything would happen to him (or to my daughter, too, but this is about sons), I don't know how I would go on living.  However, I somehow would, because I would take lessons from my friends and from the late Ms. Edwards.  They have shown me how everlasting the hurt is, how their days are often so full of pain and agony that they feel they are going insane, even years after the fact, but that life does go on, altho it is certainly not the life they wished they had.
Here is how Elizabeth Edwards describes her life without her son:
"Wishing will not return life to 'before.' 'Before' is forever gone.....This is the life we have now, and the only way to find peace, the only way to be resilient when these landmines explode beneath your foundation, is first to accept that there is a new reality.  The life the army wife knew before her husband went to war, the life of the patient before the word 'terminal' was said aloud, the life of the mother who sat reading by her son's bed and not his grave, these lives no longer exist and the more we cling to the hope that these old lives might come back, the more we set ourselves up for unending discontent."
Let us all take a lesson from these grieving, yet so brave mothers. As one said to me, "I'm so happy that you and your son had such a good visit together, recently.  I really am.  It's great that you know to cherish every moment you have with him."  I truly do.  I hope that you do the same.