Living after the loss of a child is living a series of impossibilities. Should you manage to actually survive. If you kill yourself or cease to have any reasonable brain function, I actually have no judgment for you. I know, believe me. I've wanted to do both. Some days, I still do.

But if you, for instance, have other child for whom you are responsible, generally you eventually pick yourself up and keep going, whatever that means.

For me it was strange, and remains so. I took about 3 months off of work. My company was just unbelievably compassionate. The first weeks after Max's death are a blur. We stayed with my in-laws for a while. My husband and father in law planned the services. At some point, we packed up our house and moved into an apartment owned by my husband's aunt. I cannot give you any details about these things. I remember snapshots of the service. I actually had to ask someone the other day where the mass and luncheon was held. Hell if I remember, or really care.

I drank, constantly. I paired my drinking with Klonopin and Trazodone, given to me for anxiety and sleep. There were occasions where I drank myself stupid, swallowed some pills, and vomited - lather, rinse, repeat.

I have no recollection of when my son went back to school. I don't remember where my husband was any given day. From February to...maybe the second week of March, I really only have what people tell me to remember.

Disgustingly, sappily, overly trite and cliched - I "woke up
in Spring. My first lucid, consistent memories of any kind of continuous timeline are of sunny days. My family had decided to run a 5k to raise awareness for organ donation that year, for Max. He was an organ donor, you see. I began going to the gym constantly.

I didn't see it at the time, but it's so terribly apparent now that my compulsive need to run at the time equaled a compulsive need to run. From everything. Psychologically. Duh. I don't think any of us needed Dr. Phil to figure that one out. However it generated something else. Running, I often felt then and still do now, sort of brought me back to life. I fell off the wagon when I went back to work, but it's something I still am passionate about, and I can't wait to start again after this baby.

My memory picks up again with a lot of outings with friends. I laughed a ton, believe it or not. I was always, and sometimes still am, amazed that I can still have fun. And therein lies the innate "impossibility" of life after death.

If you had told me that not only would I survive the death of my son, but I would still be able to laugh, have fun, have friends, go out, appreciate life, love my family and job...I honest to God would never have believed you. I just can't accept the possibility of it.

But I'm here now, and all those things are true, most of the time. There are times that are scary, and dark, and they seem to go on forever occasionally. There is always a hole. I feel the absence of my son as apparently as I feel the temperature in this room, or my own body taking a breath. The impossibility of it is dual - that my son is gone, and that I continued to live when he is gone.

I don't know what anything is going to feel like from day to day. I know that some days I won't want to get out of bed. Some days I will be happy, and that will still seem utterly foreign and unfair to me. Most days I will be some in between of happy and devastated. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, you can be both. Life can be both.

More when you lose a child than anything else in life, you can learn that you can live and die all at once.