Whispers from Heaven: A Mother Paints Her Triumphs and Sorrow with Words

The hope of tomorrow ...

When I first started writing my feelings down, I was doing it just for me. I felt like if I didn't get this brutal pain out of me, I was going to just die. Time after time, I tried to express to myself this terrible pain that was consuming my life. Before my son Ryan's death, I was always the kind of person who chose to always see the hope in tomorrow.

In the very beginning of my grief journey, when I was living and breathing the pain to the point I couldn't even catch my breath, the tomorrows came and I did not even know it. And to tell you the truth I did not want or care to know it. But tomorrow has a funny way of doing that. I hated tomorrows and wanted no part of them. And all I wanted to do was to stay in the pain of losing my child.

Well, I am happy to admit I no longer see it that way at all. I love tomorrows now, and I can actually feel the joy tomorrow brings. This feeling did not happen overnight, and it was a long road to get to this place called tomorrow. I do not know if it will happen for you. I do know this--it can happen. And when it does happen, it will be in the way you choose to view it and that, my friend, is for every person to make the choice.

After a few years of writing down my feelings, I realized I was actually writing a book of my pain and sorrow over Ryan's death. Whenever I went to go buy a book to try to see myself in it, I had a hard time finding the one that said it just right for me. So I wrote the book that I wanted to read--the kind of book that said it without prettying it up with fancy words to make it more palatable for the world to see. I just wanted to write a book I would read. I wanted my book to be real and to express the many different sides of grief. And in doing that I expressed the many different sides, allowing everyone who is grieving a child to find their self-validation no matter where they choose to look.