The Ghost
Every day I live with a ghost. I get up, get in my truck and go to work. I drive and the tears fall. I drive with a ghost. I can count on one hand the number of times I drove a car without Kreed. He was always there. We always had an adventure or place to go. We jam out to music, have conversation and rock the car. Now I sit with ghost.
I go to work and be with kids just like him and have to help them, even though I couldn't help him, I couldn't save him. He's the ghost there with me, in everything that I do. And all I want is for him to be back and having these epic adventures with me. Teaching him about the world and him teaching me to enjoy this life we have. Instead his ghost shadows everything I do.
I sleep at night and am still plagued by his cries, his rages, his giggles. I still have all the alarms on my phone listed but no longer set. My nights have no purpose anymore. I come home from work to the emptiness of our house and have no idea what to do most days. My whole world was his needs, planning for him, hanging out with him, helping him and doing things with him. Now his ghost just sits with us in the room he barely lived in.
No one, and I mean no one but someone who lost a child can possibly understand this. And then, it's even more with a special needs child who was your everything and loved life so much and found so much joy in his world that you couldn't help but feel it too.
Now all we have is memories. Holidays become nothing because he was the reason we would go all out. I can barely be on social media. I see parents talking about how they can't wait for their kids to go back to school and all I want to do is shake them and tell them- don't you know! Life can change in an instant and you will have no more days with your loves. Hold them tighter, hang out with them longer, enjoy the moments! Don't wish for them to be out of your presence because they could one day be permanently out of your presence and you will wish you had held them longer.
Find an adventure, teach them more, have more conversations, hold them longer, kiss them more, enjoy every moment your given because on any particular day at any particular time it could be gone. I would give up everything to have one more moment. A second. Anything.
We put Kreed above everything and I will never regret that. As we taught him and went through wicked hard times, he learned and learned to love his life despite any disability. He proved you could do anything, if you just tried. We were never afraid or if we were, we did it anyway just to get over the fear.
But now. Now, we are left with his ghost and nothing but memories. We can't reach out and touch him. We can't hold him. We can't see him. We can't hear him. And we are just left. With this massive empty void to fill that nothing does. It will remain there forever because you can't fill his shoes. He was so joyful and taught so many so much. Most of all, he loved his life.
So every day I get up and spend my day with a ghost, knowing all I have is pictured and videos to hear or see him and I'll never get to hold him again. We will never make another memory with him. I go to sleep at night and spend the night with a ghost and phantom laughs and sounds.
We will always seem fine and plaster that smile because how else would we possibly get out of bed every morning?
With his ghost. His memory. We continue on because we refuse for him to be forgotten or refuse for his life to not have meaning. We have to be the ones to make sure his light still burns. But inside we die a little every day. But we smile and function.
