I lost my 24 year old son to a rare and aggressive cancer after a two year fight. During his fight, Jordan wrote a blog to help others facing adversity. I followed his lead and wrote a blog as well to help other mothers going through the loss of a young adult child to cancer because it is so uncommon. I had a very difficult time finding resources to get support after Jordan left for heaven. I have been encouraged by many who read my blog to publish the entries as a book, Only A Mother Knows, because people feel it has a needed purpose and touches their hearts with my way of describing this life I have been through.
When you have lost a child, there are many memories that circle in your mind, hear and soul every second of every day. Some that bring a slight smile to your face and some that bring a tear to your eye. When a mother misses her child, that feeling also floats through your mind, heart and soul every second of every day. Sometimes either memories or missing them feels fresh and painful and sometimes memories and missing them feels like the comfort of being wrapped in a blanket of your child.
Most everyone thinks after the loss of a child that it is the birthday, holidays, anniversary date of losing them and any other important days of significance of mother and child that are the most difficult, and the days when they are in need of extra support. Please do not get me wrong; those times are extremely difficult, and anyone giving us support is deeply appreciated. But just like triggers can take us to our knees or have us sliding down a wall in a meltdown of sobbing, striking of out of nowhere like an unseen car as we cross the road, it is the things that life reminds us of every single second of every single day that truly take a toll on a mother after losing her child.
Jordan was three months and three weeks shy of his 25th birthday when he took his last breath in my arms. Yes, it is engraved in my being the significance of that time. However, he always lived at home. He was a commuter student to West Virginia University (WVU). This house, this world here that I am in day in and day out is where the memories and my missing him are the strongest. It is also where his absence echos the loudest.
It is in these everyday things that my mind has a memory, my soul misses him, and my heart is stabbed with pain. Jordan is (yes, is, not was) my firstborn and my only son. His physical presence has been in the fiber of my being since the moment I found out that I was pregnant. I am surrounded by him every second of every single day. It’s these “every day things and ordinary times” that cover my mind, break my heart and crush my soul.
April 1, 2018 happened to be April Fools Day and Easter Sunday. However, it was also 19 months without my son on this earth for me. I’d like to share a few every day things that came to my mind, heart and soul in both a sigh of “I love you, Jordan” and “I miss you so much, Jordan”.
So please scroll to the very end … and allow a little smile or a tear help me to keep his existence still present for you so that you may understand how every grieving mother loves her child from the moment she hears she is carrying that precious cargo until she reunites with that oh so familiar face, voice, smile and laugh in heaven after she takes her final breath. For the mother’s heart has its reasons which reason doesn’t know. Or translated to the common phrase “The heart wants what the heart wants” and The heart loves who the heart loves”.
