#3. No Guarantee

I was born on a Friday in June. I died on a Wednesday of the same month.

I learned to love at an early age, and found that the good Lord graced me with the inability to do anything partially. I love with my whole heart, from the bottom of my toes. My children are the life blood of everything good in my world. They breathe life into each day with a beauty and intrigue only paralleled by the sunrise. I love from a place I don't think many people understand. It's innocent and pure, never selfish. When I am driven to truly love someone, I find myself in near pain from the overwhelming desire to encapsulate them in honesty, hope, vision, fortitude, and strength. I've often tried to define what love is to me, but found it easier to list the things that love is not.
Love is not selfish.
Love has no motive.
Love is not attachment.
Love is not insecure.
Love does not break your heart.
Love is not a condition.

Although that is no where near  a complete list, the most important for me (today) is as follows:

Love is no guarantee.

I have debated greatly on what details I would share with this writing. In deciding, I found it important to determine an objective. Brazenly throwing my heart out for examination is reckless and dangerous and opens me up for speculation and potential harm. My goal here is to offer some sort of hand to those going through something hard in their life. Some battle. For me, this takes an insane amount of courage. I hope that is not lost on anyone.
 I have always believed that broken hearts sympathize with those that resemble their own. I have a unique ability to empathize with most people because I understand, in great depth, life's ability to strip you of all sense of security and hope. And the overwhelming notion that you are utterly and completely alone in your fight to survive. I assure you, you are not alone. You are not crazy. Neither am I. But of the barrage of emotions a person goes through in their life, only a very few are ever discussed. I will do my very best to be explicit and honest, with full regard to my own sanity and the damage and vulnerability this does to myself, and in turn my daily interactions.

Big ...........Deep......... Breath.

Even though I play June 22 over and over and over in my mind, it comes in short bursts of intensity, like lightening in desert thunder storm. I'll find myself completely detached from reality for a few moments, just long enough to paint the image, and send me reeling. Coming back from the images requires conscience effort and great determination.

I remember small things, and I remember big things. Things that shouldn't have any significance are now the things that threaten to destroy my life daily.

I remember thinking how beautiful the sun looked kissing my children that morning.
I remember mowing the lawn, and having to stop before every tall dandelion so my kids could pick them for me.
I remember watching them play while I worked around the yard.
I remember the song I was listening to, and thinking in the moment that it was significant for some reason. The lyrics haunt me to this day. "I painted your room at midnight, so I'd know that yesterday was over."
I remember all of the people I love the most being around us, like an unannounced, unplanned going away party.
I remember the sound of Claud's voice saying "Be decent for once would ya?" as he pulled forward.
I remember the sound of the bike being crushed.
I remember the sound of the little girl behind me saying "Carrie, Kole is under there."
I remember dropping to my knees.
I remember the scream........I think it was my own scream. I heard it over and over but don't remember filling my lungs with air.
I remember the tar covered pebbles pressed into my blood soaked knees.
I remember the heat of the road burning into my thighs.
I remember a woman saying "you have to try CPR or you will never forgive yourself"
I remember the wetness of his baby blood pouring down me when I pressed his tiny mouth to mine.
I remember the way it tasted. I remember the way it smelled like copper pennies. 
I remember sirens.
I remember lights.
I remember the white sheet.
Shock.
Total shock.
I remember calling Kole's dad, and the only words I had were "Kole is dead."
I remember his voice coming back through the phone like a plead more than a question "What?" he repeated over and over.
I was screaming again.
Rocking back and forth.
I remember the woman who sat with me.
I remember begging for her to pray.
I remember hating her when she prayed for me, and not for my son. I knew in that moment that my worst fears were realized. They were praying for me. My son was gone.
I remember his tiny hands, limp as i pressed them to my face, begging God to let them touch me.
I remember the way it felt when Jesus took him from my arms. 
I remember driving to the hospital with my best friend and my husband. He was gone. She kept her eyes on mine, holding me there like a lifeline to what little awareness I had to the ongoing world. She held me there like a seasoned vet in the art of loss. Alone, and blood soaked I sat across the ambulance from her, in slow motion taking everything in and seeing nothing. I only saw her eyes. "Breathe baby," she said, "Just breathe."


Like a broken record this plays in my mind, stuck on repeat. I will it to repeat. I make it start over and over. Remembering is a pain second only to the idea of forgetting it. Poignant and defining, this is where I began. Everything prior to this day is obsolete and foreign to me now.
 What I saw was horrific, my absolute worst nightmare.
I was educated enough in the field of biology and psychology to know instantly that there was no hope. I am plagued with disbelief still to this day, but am forced to open my eyes to it and face it every single day.

What many of you don't realize is every  day is a choice. Whether you wake up on the street, or you wake up in a mansion in Fiji, the truth of the matter is, you make a decision to continue breathing. You absolutely, do not have to. For many days after the accident, I absolutely did not want to. It wasn't a suicidal thought process, as much as a lack of soul. I had no soul. My heart was at the mortuary, and my soul was a tar covered pebble soaked in blood. I felt crazy. I felt lost and confused. And yet there was my beautiful hazel eyed two year old, toddling around my mother in law's house, looking for his brother, and looking form me.

I don't remember thinking about much. I just remember the whole experience being like a VCR, hit record and watch it backwards, when it clicks, push play and watch it forward.

Cleaning up after the accident was a terrifying ordeal. Blood has a new significance to me now. I went into the bathroom of my Sister in Law's home. Alone for the first time. Alone with my reflection. I saw at that moment what I had envisioned, only worse. Particulate stuck to my body, blood matted my hair. I alone was enough to scare anyone, compounded with the days events was something Stephen King wouldn't touch. It was too much. I looked at myself for a long time, blinking slowly at my reflection. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was a moment of rebirth. My clothes had adhered to my skin, glued down in red. My skin was caked in burgundy and sticky black tar that had melted on the black top and adhered to my exposed legs and forearms. I peeled my shirt up, listening to the crackle of the stiff material as I pulled it over my head. Rage coursed through me. Blaring hot rage, like the bubbles of tar on the road, I wanted to explode and cover everything around me in the darkness that was closing in. I slipped off my daisy duke shorts and stared at them blankly laying at my feet. Guilt. Why had I put them on, why did I require attention, did it kill my son? Did I kill my son. More rage. The shower was on I noticed after a few minutes. Someone must have turned it on, it was beyond me. I don't remember the drive to the house. I don't remember words said. I remember no shoes, leaving the hospital after they asked me to pull back the sheet so they could "confirm death."
Blaring, deep, resentful, rage.
 The water wasn't hot enough. The water is never hot enough to remove the blood. I turned it all the way to the left and watched the steam billow out of the bathtub. I climbed in and know it scalded me but I felt nothing. I watched the white tub streak red at first, and then it was covered the way I was. I sat in the basin and watched the red surround me, and then run down the drain. He was running down the drain.
Rewind, push play.
The red wouldn't come off. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. I scoured my skin with every ounce of soap I could find and used my fingernails to scrape red. I then realized it ran from my hair. Still matted after what seemed an eternity in the water. I washed it, and rinsed it and washed it again. It wouldn't come clean. I could never be clean again. It was all or nothing. Leave my body soaked, or remove it all. My knees were bleeding now. The pebbles that were pressed into them like a queen's rhinestone were now laying in the drain and in their place, perfect indentations that mixed my own blood with my child's.
 Despair. I can't win. I'll never win again. I have lost. Everything.
Guilt.
Rage.
Rewind, push play.
The water was cold. Freezing now. I hadn't noticed. Now there were tears. Finally there were tears. Forever, there would be tears.
My frozen and shaking body prompted me to turn off the water. I sat dripping wet and naked in the tub, unwilling to face what lay beyond the seclusion. Had I known, I might have stayed in there longer.
I would discover over the next few days a spectrum of emotion that neither has a limit on low, or high. I would find out what seclusion really was. Seclusion that was felt while standing in front of God and a thousand people, alone. Today was the first day of the rest of my life, and the last day of my son's life.
Rewind, push play.