Blackgnat - you are right there with everyone else you know. We all feel that way. Some just get past it (or hide it) better than others. Maybe they've just had more time.
This ↑. Perfect quote. A moms pain is a moms pain. Even when things are going well, there is this little empty place inside me - where what my life (my son's life) should have been but isn't - lives. I feel it always, even now when he's working and has a roof and a girlfriend and ... it's this fear...this expectation of the next disaster. But empty too. I hurt, always, because this is not how his life was supposed to be.
I hope someday I can shed that hurt and accept that there is no "supposed to be".
I never really equated the two, but I suppose loss is loss and pain is pain. I'm the same way Tanya. My mother passed away shortly before I turned 24. I'm 52. I've lived almost 5 years more without her than I had her - 28 years later I still get sad sometimes. I still miss her like crazy.
Life goes on.
