Ronan. It’s the middle of the night and I can hear the rain. It’s pouring down outside. I just went to check on your brothers and in doing so, I have to walk by your empty room. I peaked inside. Nobody was there. That reality never gets any easier for me. I think I ended up losing my shit yesterday. It was really triggered a couple of days ago when I came home in the middle of the day from somewhere and I walked into our quiet house. I had been working at our kitchen table and I had left a bunch of packages on top of it, right where you would normally be sitting. As I turned the corner to our kitchen, I thought there was somebody sitting in your spot. I thought it was you. I imagined it was and how I would react. I imagined scooping you up, kissing you all over, crying tears of joy, and saying over and over that I always knew you were really coming back. This image has haunted me for days now. I was out all day yesterday, being productive and came home after a long day of trying to be a part of this world. That’s when I lost my shit and could do nothing but pace our house, crawl in my bed, and cry for hours on end. Your daddy came home to see me in bed. I had gotten a text from my mom friend, Sarah, asking if I was going to support group tonight at Dr. Jo’s. I told her no, that sitting around listening to everyone talk about their dead kids, was not a good place for me. Especially as of now, due to the life that is growing inside of me. Support group is hard anyway but it’s even harder to go being pregnant. Sarah said she selfishly wished I was coming as she was wanting to see me. I wanted to see her as well and her partner, Rae Ann. Noah’s mom’s. I sent Jo a little text to ask if she was leading group. She said she was and she could see me before hand as well. I threw on some appropriate clothes (pants included) and hardly said 2 words to your daddy as I headed out the door with my tear-stained cheeks and blood-shot eyes. Our house was screaming at me and I could no longer take it.
I got to Jo’s a sobbing mess and told her what was going on. She sat, asked me some questions, gently reminded me of all the stress/crap/petty fucking stupid fucking shit/insane pretend problems that normal people have that I don’t understand anymore that I’ve been trying to deal with and understand/the fact that I’m about to have a baby/ and how your two years is approaching. No wonder I am freaking the fuck out. She knows these next few months are going to be hard. May is right around the corner, you know. I just sat and cried and talked when I could. Before I knew it, it was time for group to start. I had decided to stay mostly because I just wanted to be with Noah’s mom’s. It was a pretty full group. It went a little something like this. Stillbirth, me-cancer, stillbirth, stillbirth, stillbirth, 8-month old unknown cause of death, 3-year-old just stopped breathing, 8th month old-can’t remember, still birth, still birth, murdered child, 8 month old again. Of course you know why I think Poppy is going to be born dead. Because I live in the world of childhood cancer and still births. I talked a little but was mostly too upset to even tell your story. Support group never gets easier. The death of your child, never gets easier. It’s not something we will ever overcome. It’s not like AA, where we can recover from our disease, start over, and live a clean, healthy life. Our disease never goes away. I think about this a lot, especially when I am in a group setting like tonight. How the world is so accepting of people who are trying to recover from alcohol or drug abuse. How there is so much love and support out there for them over something that is a choice for most people. I understand that being an alcoholic or abusing drugs is a horrific, powerful disease in life, but some people, not all, make the choice to do these things. None of us parents, made the choice for our kids to get sick and die, yet there is so little love and support out there for us. Society doesn’t want to acknowledge us, Betty Ford doesn’t fit for us, the government doesn’t care about us. So where do we go and what are we left to do, to get through this?
In my dream of all dreams, after I get this care center built, I want to help Jo with one of her little dreams. That is creating a safe place, almost like a rehab for these parents to come to that have lost a child. A safe place for parents to come, with the proper counselors and proper kind of compassionate care that they so need. A place where bereaved parents can try to process their grief before being shoved out into the cruel, harsh, happy go fucking lucky world again where everyone has a living child, except for them. A Betty Ford for bereaved parents in a way. I would have went to a place like that. I think it would have helped me a lot in the beginning. Oh, people wanted to send me away alright. But it was only to a mental ward where that shadow would have haunted me for the rest of my life because I’m sure I would have been given a permanent diagnoses of bullshit that would have followed me around forever. This is a path of life that we as parents, will never get off of. There is no changing our course. There is no bringing our children back. We are stuck here, forever. It’s like the ultimate prison where we as parents have done nothing wrong except for love our kids with everything we have, yet we are serving a life sentence for a crime we didn’t commit. (well, unless you are someone like Casey Fucking Anthony, then you should rot in hell a.k.a. a real jail cell for the rest of your life)
There is no place for parents to go so we are all forced back out into a world that does not exist for us and we are expected to be o.k. Hey, our kid or kids just died but we’ll get over it, right? Life just goes on and we are expected to be strong because being strong is the only choice we have. It’s wrong. We all need a break from being this strong once in a while. Being this strong can be torture at times. Bereaved parents need a safe place to go where their children are remembered and they can take a break from being strong for a while. As much as I think support group is great, a tangible place where parents could go to for longer period of time than an hour a month, would be so much freaking better. Add it to my list of big dreams. It seems so obvious to me and I don’t understand why it doesn’t already exist. I guess it’s because Dr. Jo hasn’t done it yet and she is the only one fit for this job. Someday, I promise this is going to be a reality and I will do whatever I can to help her with this.
I have to run today, Ro baby. I have an interview in a few minutes. I miss you. I love you. I hope you are safe. Thanks for the rain last night.
xoxo
ROCKSTAR RONAN 
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