I’m not dead. I may be dying. Or I may just be…

Ronan. The weekend is almost over. I spent it with Liam, Quinn, and your daddy. Not sure all of what we did. We stayed around the house a lot. We played in your room a lot. We made breakfast together and sat around at the table, without you. I am never going to stop being sad. None of us will. But slowly we seem to be coming back together; as a family. For so long, everything felt like it was so broken, that it was unrepairable. It’s not unrepairable. I can feel things being glued back into place. It’s because of the love from your daddy and your brothers, that we will be repaired. It just takes time. None of us are in a rush. You cannot rush something like this. Do you know what your daddy says to me, every night before we fall asleep? That he loves me. And that he is so sorry. We both will never stop being sorry. This is just one of the little reasons, that I know we are going to be o.k. Because we are both so sorry. But there is no blame, no resentment, no anger towards each other. We are both just really, really, sad.

It rained here today. It made me miss you so much. If you were here, we would have gone puddle jumping or played in our backyard, in the mud. Your brothers went to a birthday party. I hung out at home with your daddy, in our quiet house. Our now too quiet of a house that is so empty without you. Your daddy asked if I wanted to go to a movie. I told him no. I didn’t feel like doing much of anything. I watched the rain from our bedroom, instead. I’ve been tired lately. I’ve slept really well, which is weird to me.

So, this new friend of mine, Margarita, has been spreading around some rumors that I am not all that dangerous! Can you even believe that, Ro? She totally thinks she has me figured out. I knew I had to come up with a way, to prove to her, that I am in fact, really reckless and dangerous. It was about 6:15 tonight when I suddenly, felt the need to get some fresh air. I texted her and said, “I’m going hiking. Are you coming?” She told me no, she would not be coming, that it was too cold and wet outside and she hated the rain. And she might hate hiking, too. Yoga. She likes Yoga. I do not. Well, that’s not entirely true. I used to love Yoga. Until my life turned into total chaos. Now yoga make me angry. It’s too happy/peaceful/calm. All the things that I used to be, but am not anymore. Maybe someday I will go back to it. Dr. JoRo swears by it. I’m just not ready for it. I told Margarita fine, but I was going… and it was not all that wet outside. She tried to put up a fight, but once she knew I was serious, she decided to meet me. It was starting to get dark as we began our death hike. I don’t know why I decided to go hiking, so late tonight but you know how I am… once I get an idea into my head there is no stopping me. We hiked up, it got dark, we turned on the flashlight on my iPhone. Soon the wind started to howl, (as well as an owl) and down came the buckets of rain. “Ummm, don’t think we are making it to the top, we’d better turn around!” I yelled to Rita. We were about half way up. Crap. It was really raining/windy/dark/totally dangerous. Rita yelled to me, “Maya, you may call this dangerous… I just call it stupid.” I started cracking up. “You are so going to hate me, after this!” I said. We made it down the mountain, without breaking our necks or spraining our ankles. We both yelled out, “Fuck you cancer!!!!!!!!!!” at the top of our lungs. I told Rita I wouldn’t have been hiking on a pitch black, rainy, windy night if you were still here. She said she knew. She asked why she was hiking, with me. I said because you were not here. Same answer as mine. She agreed.

That was Sunday, Ro. It’s now, Wednesday. Hi. Hello. I have too much to say. I haven’t been writing, for a few reasons. The main one being, I just don’t know how to say this so I guess I’m just going to fucking say it. I’m either dying of some horrific disease (more than likely, cancer) or I am pregnant. Or I am having a false pregnancy in my head which could very well likely be a possibility too. The placebo effect is very real and a total possibility, but I don’t think it’s that. I think I am dying or pregnant. Or both. But maybe just pregnant. How in the world could this have happened, you might ask?? Well, let’s backtrack way far back, to right before you were diagnosed. I had that little IUD removed out of my body. I remember driving home from the OBGYN and having the conversation with your daddy which was, “I just had my IUD taken out….. so now what?” Your daddy asked if we were done having kids. I vaguely remember saying, ” I don’t think so… do you?” We didn’t decide on anything right then and there. We just left it as an open-ended conversation. And then, a few days later, we heard the words that a parent never wants to hear which was, “You child has stageIVfuckingbullshitwhatthefuckthiscannotberealcancer.” Our lives changed over night. The baby thing obviously went on the back burner. I stopped talking about it. Your daddy started to bring it up, right around Christmas time, when we went to NYC to have your base tumor removed from your abdomen. Your daddy would bring it up, and ask why I wouldn’t talk about it anymore. I mostly just ignored him and told him we could talk about it, once you got better. He pushed a little. I ignored him and he pretty much stopped bringing it up. I talked about it with you only. We talked about having another baby brother or sister. You wanted one so badly. We talked about names and if you wanted it to be a boy or a girl. You wanted a sister. We joked about having more twins. You liked the thought of that. You liked the idea of a little one or ones, to boss around. We talked about it a lot, the two of us. It was our little secret plan that when the time was right, and you were better…. another baby was in the cards. Before the blink of an eye, you my healthy boy who was kicking cancer’s arse…. was not anymore. I swear you were doing so well, and then *BAM!* within weeks you were dead. I still can’t wrap my head around how that happened…

So, Ro…. since you’ve been gone, the baby thing has come up again. Not many people have brought it up. Your daddy has hinted around here and there, and I pretty much refused to talk about it. I only really talk to Dr. JoRo about this baby thing. We’ve been sitting with it, for a while. I divulged my deepest fears, lots of tears, guilt, I’m betraying Ronan, what if this baby dies, or gets cancer, or I don’t love it as much, I’m not worthy of having another baby since Ronan died…. I should not be allowed to feel any happiness or love that a baby could bring into this world, and how will I know, when the time is right??? She told me there would never be a right time. She didn’t argue with any of my worries/feelings/fears. We talked about them instead. We’ve talked about all these things for a good 4 months now, in-depth. She had her baby boy, Josh, after Chey died. She gets it. Sometimes I feel as our lives or so parallel, that it was fate that we met the way we did. Your fate. I believe you were the one behind me finding her. I am so thankful to you for that. We have too much in common for it not to be something more then just a coincidence.

It’s just been recently that I don’t cringe every time somebody touches me or gives me love and affection in a physical way. I’ve been so detached from everything and everyone. Your daddy and brothers included. I’ve told Dr. Jo that I think a baby is going to be the only way our family can learn to be a little happy again. It’s been in the back of my mind, for a long time now, but it’s only recently that I’ve started to come around a bit to start thinking about it more. Your Sparkly has been buzzing in my ear about it for a while now. Sometimes I’ll talk to him in-depth about it or sometimes it hurts so badly that I’ll say something snarky like, “Not having this conversation with you, today. I don’t want to go there now.” I always see the sad look in his eyes, when I refuse to have the baby talk with him. He always gives me the look and the, “Please think about it. You are the best mother. Please do it, before I get too old. It would be so good for you, Woody, and the boys.” I usually just look at the ground and try not to cry. And then he asks my to smile for him and I am too upset so I’ll just tell him, “No. No smiles today. And what are you talking about? You are not old at all. You are so young…” There are a lot of days when I won’t smile when he asks. I hate those days the most.

So, it was last Monday that it kind of clicked for me that, “Ok… maybe it would be o.k. to start trying to have this baby. Trying being the operative word here. Just once. Not that it would actually happen, but more like, let’s get used to this idea that we are not going to not try to not have a baby. I woke up Friday morning with a very familiar feeling. The same one that I had with you. Mother fucker! I thought to myself. I’m fucking pregnant! I’m not making those words up. That’s what I thought in my head. There were no tears of joy. No jumping up and down. It was complete and total shock, along with a lot of cuss words that followed. Wait a minute. I did not mean I wanted to actually get pregnant right this second. I don’t keep track when I ovulate or anything. I was just getting warmed up to this new idea. And HOLY SHIT. OH MY GOD. My boobs. They felt like they were on fire. That’s how I knew within in a week of conceiving you, that I was pregnant. I remember I went to meet Tricia for a run. I looked at her and said, “My boobs really hurt. I think I’m pregnant.” I was. That’s always been my first and biggest indication. It’s too early for a pregnancy test and I may full on be making this up. My body is so out of whack these days, I never know what is going on. But I’m exhausted. Sleeping like a baby. My boobs are still on fire. I have an appetite and I am eating weird shit like this seaweed crap from Trader Joe’s that no less than 2 weeks ago, I was making fun for Dr. JoRo for eating. Guess where I found myself, yesterday?? At Trader Joe’s, scouring the aisles for seaweed. Who am I?? What is going on?? I think I have a pretty good idea.

I’m mildly freaking out. But I cannot fully freak out until I know for sure. I can of course say, I was not ready for this. If I am indeed pregnant, I’ll have 8 and a half months to get used to this idea. If I am not, I will be totally o.k. with that as well. But I may be slightly worried about the power of my mind and it’s ability to trick my entire body into thinking that a baby is on it’s way. That will really freak me out and I may consider going on a long vacation to the middle of nowhere to try to prevent this nervous breakdown that is clearly happening due to your deathday/birthday/fuckingmother’sday that is coming up. That is a whole other post that I just don’t have the energy to write about tonight.

I sat in Dr. JoRo’s office for a couple of hours today. We talked a lot about you and the possibility of another baby. We talked about how a baby will NEVER take away this pain/sadness/grief I feel for you. How this baby, will never lessen this pain. How this baby will never replace you. How I need to prepare myself for the stupid shit that people are going to say like, “OH!!! A new baby! I’m so glad to see you are over the death of your son! I am so glad to see that you are moving on! This is a sign, from God! This is what was meant to happen! God DID have a plan, it included your child dying, so this child could be born! You are all better, etc….etc….etc….”

I get that people mean well, but I would really like to hear none of those things. I will never be over the death of you, Ronan. Never. I will never move on. I will never be better. I am just learning how to live a whole new life and this whole new life will always include the pain of not having you. I am learning how to manage these feelings that I now have. This life is wrong without you. This life is broken. This life will never be the same. But I am learning to manage all of this. Manage is the new key to this life now. I can’t change the pain, but I can make it manageable so it doesn’t destroy me. I won’t let it.

That was today. I’ve been writing and not posting. I needed some time to digest the maybe baby thing. Your daddy asked me what I thought you would say about all of this. I told him I thought you would be happy, but sad that you are not here, to be the big brother that you should have been. You would have been the best big brother ever. I’m sad for that too. I’m sad for another reason that has had me hysterical the past couple of days too. Today, is Sparkly’s birthday. I’m sad you are not here, to sing to him. I remember exactly where we were, last year, due to it being his birthday. We were in NYC. You were getting better, or so we thought. You were upset that we could not see your Sparkly. We took a picture of you with your big, gorgeous smile and bald little head to send to him. We sent him a text with your picture and said, “Happy Birthday, Sparkly! We love and miss you!” You were so excited to send him that beautiful picture of yourself. I wished him the best Happy Birthday I could muster up, without having you here to do it with me. I made sure my voice did not quiver while I was telling him to have a great day. I got a, “Thank you, sweetheart,” in return. I could hear the sadness in his voice though. I hung up the phone and buried myself in the pillows of our bed, and drenched them with my tears. I HATE THIS SO MUCH. You should be here, singing in the phone. I should not be on the phone, using my strongest/bravest/I am o.k. but really I am not/but have the happiest birthday ever voice. Please come back. I hate doing all of these things, without you.

Little man. I have to end this now. It’s a long, long, post. I love you to the moon and back. I miss you so much. I hope you are safe. G’nite baby doll.

xoxo