Brought to you by the letter L

Some days, you just have to walk away from trying to catch up and just jump in. So pfffft to the a to z challenge, here’s today’s post.

L for lost!

It’s a bit how I’m feeling today. Lost. Some days the sorrow, the regret, the heartache of life just bites me in the ass.  I don’t remember dates, well, you know, dates…numbers so maybe it was this time of year, twenty years ago, that I stood in a hospital room, wondering how it had all come to this.  From jail, to lack of nutrition consuming his muscle mass, to the emergency room with paddles shocking my oldest child back to life, to those who said “maybe it would have been better if they had just let him go.” Better for who?

How does a mother ever reconcile herself to the absolute heartbreak of mental illness?

Twenty years later, he’s still with me, my oldest child, still living with schizophrenia, and most every day, he writes to me and ends with “I love you mom” and still,  some days, like today, my heart still feels so damn lost.

And still, as Garth Brooks so beautifully sings: