My son Warren Jr. has been dead 12 years. I’m not
embarrassed to say I miss him everyday. At 9 ½ months old his pancreas stopped
working. At that time he was diagnosed as a Type 1 diabetic and required two
shots of insulin a day. As a young mother my mind scrambled trying to grab hold
of what I had just been told. My ex-husband reacted in a way I never
understood. He grew angry and would eventually accuse me as being the reason
our son required insulin to keep him alive. Of course that was painful. It hurt
to have my husband say something like that as angry as he could. My heart broke
each time he said it to me. That kind of behavior was another reason I wanted
to divorce him; eventually I would leave him. My ex used to beat me all the
time, and being fed up, I left him with our two children. But this post isn’t
about my ex nor the violent abuse I endured. This story is about surviving the
death of a child.
There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of my son.
He was a funny young man and if you didn’t know it, you wouldn’t know he was
diabetic. He wasn’t over weight as a matter of fact he played basketball daily.
He touched so many lives and that became evident at the funeral. It was
standing room only at the church and after many years I can look back and smile
at the effect he had on so many people. That made me proud. But no matter how I
look at it, the day my son died was the saddest day of my life.
We had planned to go shopping that next day but that never
happened. Warren Jr. died at 2:18am on April 28th. The sun set on
his life.
I try not to be the woman that talks about the death of her
child all the time. As a matter of fact the only thing that has changed about
me is that I lost a significant part of me. A part that used to define my
personality.
I used to think it was just sadness. Sadness that lived in
the hole left by my child dying. I stopped dreaming or even planning to do
things. You see my son and I had plans
but that never happened. His death impacted me in such a way that I’ve become
agnostic. Yeah a new word I learned today that describes my relationship with
God. I have hope but I don’t believe God will make my life better. For 12 years
I’ve changed jobs like I change shoes. And just today I realized why success
evades me. I stopped believing when they closed the casket with my sons’ body
in there. I felt like I was living an episode of The Twilight Zone. I kept
thinking I was going to wake up and everything would go back to being
normal. Normal never returned, I’ve been
waiting 12 years.
I’m writing this because writing has always been cathartic
for me. Maybe after 12 years my life will come back to me. Maybe I’ll find
happiness. I am thankful and grateful for the love of my daughter and son in
law. They are the best blessing I know of. I needed to write this so I will be
able to look back and say, ‘look how far you’ve come.’ Tonight I’m going to
believe. I have to or else my broken
heart will kill me. I know my son wouldn’t want that. I don’t want it. I just
want to be happy again; I want to believe again.
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