In dreams.

Slept like I was in a coma last night. Thank you Benadryl. Awoke having been visited by Isaac. We were lying in a hammock and Josh had given me a thermometer. My temp was 103.6. I was like I don’t feel like I have a fever. That’s really high, should I call the doctor?!
Chris Stapleton and Jimbow appeared in all white– Jimbow wearing white pants and white button up shirt. He had his pants rolled to just above his knees and was barefoot. Chris had on a white sun dress. They said “um, I didn’t know you’re party was listed in a magazine! (It isn’t, just fyi) “We aren’t prepared for a party that size” i said “let’s just cancel it anyway I have a high fever”. And they said good idea and left. 

Then Josh laughed really hard and said “I sprayed it with thermoinsulating nuclear reactive homogenizing spray! hahahaha as he jumped thru a window into our neighbors house. Isaac laughed that old beautiful laugh and then faded away. I was struck then, in dream time, with such a deep feeling of being duped that has become so familiar– like…let me see if I can explain it– like when everyone is in on a prank except you– and you think something is real and you’re so excited, and you’re so happy, and then it’s all a joke and everyone laughs in good fun but you’re so disappointed that it’s a joke– because you liked the thing that was a joke, like you won a new car–that feeling that Isaac and I were so happy and life was just getting better and better all the time and then– the punchline, your child dies by his own hands. 
Like life was just merrily merrily merrily and then all of a sudden, you watch it all go down the drain. 
I try so hard to let all the memories be safe from sadness but at times they all feel like they have a little footpath to… This. Even the memories of him as a little boy. I will find myself in them, reliving them, so happy, so in the moment– and then just struck with…. This. I start to move… Ahead. I start to feel like it is all bearable, and then I touch the supple center of this ache and I am back to square one, I am Mother may I take 10 steps backwards, I am do not pass go do not collect $200 go directly to jail. Starting over again and again. 
I have lost people to death before. They do not still live in my head. I am humbled by all the times I didn’t understand grief. Because how could this not be the reality if you lose someone precious. I wouldn’t want to be “over it”– because this was my only child– I will live and miss him forever. Wish he was here. Yearn for his face in my hands and his laughter. If he had died in anyway. But this ache, this heavy syrup I walk through, due to suicide, is just too much sometimes. I will endure, but sometimes, well– honestly all the time, I am just overcome with the whatthefuckness of it. I have to keep myself from saying this every time I open my mouth. At home at work at the beach at the gas station when I rise when I lay down. Over and over, the words at the tip of my tongue are WHAT THE FUCK. Because seriously. What in the fuck. Still. And Still.
I keep believing a time will come when I wake up and this has all been a high fever nightmare. That I will go into Isaacs room and ask him if he wants blueberry pancakes. If he wants to go to the beach. If he wants to cuddle. How did you sleep bubba. 
I wonder often what life would be like if he had survived that day. If we got to him in time. If he would have been at peace forever or if it was only just a matter of time. I wonder if he would have been treated differently. If he would have gotten the right help or if he could have received all the love and light and hope that he has, that we have, posthumously. If that might have bolstered him whenever life got tricky. And always, and especially, if anything at all could have been different so that day would never have been an option. If I had a do over what would I have changed. What would I do differently. What would I have had him do differently. I still don’t know. I still don’t. 
Without this as an informant, or with it. If I had woken from a nightmare that felt this real, what would I do to ensure a different trajectory? How would I have conveyed the fear in my heart? What could I change? I ask this of myself, dear reader, rhetorically. And not in the agony it would be easy to assume, but rather in pure curiosity. I’ve had other dreams, dreams that shake you up, but still don’t change your course, afterall. We tell ourselves it was just a dream. We put it away. We move on. Maybe for awhile we pray it doesn’t come true, but eventually, we return to our reality. Our waking knowledge. Our living truth. The things that alter my course have always been aftermath lessons– and yet I find, even with all I know, what could I have done differently? What WOULD I do differently? I couldn’t have loved him MORE. Maybe better. Maybe wiser. Maybe with more future thinking. But I just don’t know. I just don’t.
I don’t arrive here each time, throwing my hands up and saying I would’ve done it all the same. No way. I’d change so much– but I just wonder if it would’ve if it could’ve mattered. Just as I don’t understand why, or how, so too do I not understand what, when or where.
That’s all. I just live with the earnest hope that he knew what seems impossible to know for most of us; how much our parents love us, how our happiness is theirs, how our hurts hurt them. I’m living with it everyday, watching my parents ache for me– as well as for their own loss. How much they worry, how they aren’t sure what to do. How they wonder…
May the circle be unbroken, by and by Lord…