The difference of a year......

     Everyone keeps posting these "A year ago I never would have imagined my life the way it is today" photos. It got me thinking. A year ago I really and truly wanted to die. I didn't have a plan. I didn't tell anyone (except my counselor) but I truly felt like my life was over. I wasn't eating. Was still not drinking that well. I cried often yet smiled for others. Everything I did hurt. Leaving my house brought anxiety unlike anything I have ever felt before.

     Inside I felt dead. Yet I still got up each day. Got my kids ready for school. Worked and loved on other people's kids. At night I would sit in the stillness and just beg and plead for God to let me go home with Sterling now. My kids deserved so much better than me. After all, I couldn't even keep their beloved baby brother alive. Getting up each day to the realization that Sterling really was never coming back was torture. Each day I was doing for others and just surviving.

     At this time last year I had a few dreams of Sterling. Those dreams were very healing. Painful but healing. In one dream Sterling was in in my arms. He would be smiling one minute and dead the next. I would take him to the best doctors. They would revive him and send us on our way, only to have him die in my arms again. Finally Sterling died and the doctor let me take him home. A little girl came up smiling at Sterling and I freaked thinking this little girl was going to see a dead baby. But she surprised me. She kept smiling and talking to him. I can't explain it but it was in that moment in this dream that I realized Sterling is not really dead. Death is an illusion. He is alive and well in ways I needed to better understand.

     I have not had many dreams of Sterling since that one. I feel like he had actually came to me to help me understand that I carry him with me always. I will see him again. Even in death he can still bring smiles to people's faces. I feel his presence in my dreams every once in a while now. I long to hold him in my dreams again, see his face, hear his laughter.  I know when the time is right he will show himself to me again.

     Today I am working on my health. Getting in shape. I have no desire to die like I did a year ago. I still want to be with Sterling but I take comfort in knowing that he is safe, he is happy and he is not feeling this pain that I feel. I still question so much but I know that if the doctors didn't see his defects in life there was no way I could have. I still carry some guilt as his mom for not being able to save him but I know his death wasn't my fault. Sterling has a legacy now. His story will educate others and hopefully save others from this pain.