Oh no, Joseph is gone...

[Pcola Girl]

I know exactly how you are feeling aboutr Josephs death. Its so sad to lose a child. We lost our son back in 2002 and I am still not over it. Its hard but with Gods power we have to go on.
My prayers are with you.

[Kiara874]

Here's another post from Sheri:

SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 2007 06:09 AM, CST
It is ten days today since Joseph died. The emotions are so up and down. One minute I am doing so well that I start to feel guilty about it. Next minute a wave of grief hits me so hard I literally cannot breathe for a moment. And in each of those two extremes I can't remember what the other extreme feels like. I know I dreamed about him last night but I cannot remember it and that bothers me. I want to remember it. I am desperate for some sign from him. All of his things came back yesterday from the memorial display. Everything in me is opposites. I don't want to see or talk to anybody but I can't stand to be alone. The idea of being in a dark theater with a nice hot bag of popcorn sounds terrific but I feel a sickening aversion to going to see a film. I enjoy being busy and distracted but am dreading returning to work. I want his pictures and belongings displayed everywhere but then take them down because of the constant reminder that he is no longer here. Every little step toward rebuilding an everyday life feels like a step away from Joseph. I am resisting mentally. I seem to have lost some of the more basic functions of my body and mind. I am constantly misplacing my cell phone and my car keys. I am distracted and trip over things a lot. I actually worry a little bit about my driving. I just don't seem to pay attention as well right now. I keep being surprised by things, things that remind me of him. And everything reminds me of him. If he ever did it, looked at it or breathed on it I get a wrench of pain inside. It makes me want to just sit on my couch and stare straight ahead sometimes. It is startling to feel that debilitated in the span of just a few moments. I went to Wal-Mart yesterday to pick up some things for Nick's camping trip this weekend and walking past the toy aisles just about did me in. I may have to stop shopping there for a while. The entire store is painful. He always wanted to go there first thing when he got out of the hospital to look at all the people and the "stuff".

Nick and Alex are my saving grace. They went back to school on Thursday and seem to be coping extraordinarily well. I have encouraged them both strongly to go to their counselor if they feel sad during the day. Nick said on the first day he wound up in the bathroom hiding while he cried a couple of times. They both were eager and ready to return to school and Nick is headed out camping with the scouts today, returning tomorrow (brrrr!). Everything in me right now wants to smother mother them and I have to be cautious. I can see them both trying to take care of me and I am trying to let them show their concern but at the same time let them know that I will be fine. I made homemade chili last night and we make Frito Pie out of it. They both ate so heartily and it reminded me how few homemade meals they have had over the last year and a half. And I feel glad I can do more of that now. Which just brings the grief around again. Up down up down up down. I have contacted Journey of Hope for Nick and Alex and there is a GriefHurts seminar the first weekend in February at Cook's for parents who have lost a child to cancer that I will probably attend. I am looking at taking on some extra transcription work at home for evenings and weekends so I can start to squirrel funds away to go to nursing school. I promised Joseph I would and I feel very strongly the pull to do it.

[1Life2Live]

Sherri, thank you so much for letting us into your world. It must be some what healing to put your feelings, emotions, and thoughts down on paper. May you grow stronger as the time goes by.

God Bless you and your family!

[Stormyskies]

SUNDAY, JANUARY 21, 2007 10:22 PM, CST



Who would have ever known one 13 year old boy could be so wrapped into my world that each individual strand of connection now vibrates with the plink-plink of severence. The sun was a wonderful thing today and I spent some time out in it. I never knew I could feel such a sense of physical well being at the same time as the sensation of wilting inside. As Joseph's funeral flowers now begin to fade and grow limp, I feel my spirit doing the same.

I went to pick up a bag of green apples today with the one thought that was almost subconscious....."The boys will eat these". And then I just stopped. And realized Joseph is the fruit eater among us. And I put them down. And I saw the plums. And the peaches out of season. And another thread went "plink".... like the sensation of a healthy hair being pulled out by the follicle....like the cartoons where the guitar strings break and coil upward in crazily skewed shapes. I am coming undone one thread at a time. Mostly still together, but watching in fear as it all comes closer to coming apart inside. It would be so much easier if there was blatant medical negligence. Or if I had failed to do something I should have or did something I should not have. Or if Joseph had refused to take care of himself properly. Or if Stewart and I were adversarial and I could just blame him regardless the way some divorced couples do. It would be so much easier with someone or something to blame. Somewhere to direct the anger. Some cause to identify as the advent of pain. This helpless not knowing why....the desperate longing for answers....the constant desire to have a little more time.....Time to say good-bye. Time to evaluate. Time to heal him. Time to live together. Time to savor things I failed to. Time to learn how to go on without him.

I go back to work tomorrow. I like my job. But it feels like forever since I have been there and I am full of anxiety. Worried about the worried faces that will greet me. Worried about the amount of work piled up while I was out. Worried how it will make me feel. Worried they will want me to talk about it. Worried I will cry in front of them. I broke out in hives tonight thinking about it all.

I want to go back to the room where it all happened. I want to assure myself he isn't still there. And yet I don't want to see or force myself to know. I want to know why the sight of his sweatpants makes me cry more than the sight of his teddy bear sometimes. I want to buy him the new shoes he told me he needed the day we went back to the hospital. I want to know why he had to suffer so much only to die from his disease.

This is just a journal now to get out my feelings. Please know there is nothing really to be said at this time to comfort me. I do not want my writing here to feel like some kind of pressure on those of you who care to find a way to make this better for me. We both know you can't. Your soft and tender "listening", your sympathetic ear, your realization that I (we) have to stumble our way into a new normal, that things will never be the old "normal" again...these things mean so much to me and I thank you. I thank you for your patience. I thank you for your compassion.

I did have a good day today, believe it or not. I truly do not understand how somewhere inside I feel just fine...and at the same time feel so desolate. It is bizarre, like a paisley pattern of feelings. I am so scared of learning to live without him. I don't want to. And yet I do not want to build a monument of grief to his memory. I am a living contradiction.

[LowCarb Leann]

I haven't been on the playground in a few weeks. I just found out.

I don't know you, nor did I know Joseph, but I know the depth of a mother's love. I can't even imagine the indescribable agony of what you are being forced to endure. It all seems so very cruel and without reason. My thoughts and prayers are with you.

[USMCmom]

Sheri,

Thank you for continuing to share your thoughts with us. We're all grieving with you in one way or another. Putting your thoughts in writing is probably doing your soul good. Please continue to write as long as you need to.

I know there isn't a whole lot anyone can say right now to help ease the pain, but I just want you to know that, even though we have never met, you are in my thoughts often.

[FurkidsMom]

My heart is breaking for Sheri.

We met with Dr. Goldman and got Joseph's autopsy results today.

There was no bacteria, no fungus, no CMV or adenovirus or any other organism. His lungs were clean in that respect. But each of them weighed more than his liver and they were completely solid in the lower 2/3.

Joseph died because in the process of healing from the CMV pneumonitis his lungs filled up their air sacs with scar tissue.

He didn't stand a chance.

There was no chance at all this process could have been reversed or stopped. By the time it was detectable on his X-rays a cascade effect was in motion...the damaged tissue overburdening the healthy, made worse by the ventilator and then the oscillator. He was probably sick with the CMV pneumonitis when he was home at Thanksgiving and in his early days in the hospital after...and as he started to cure, the strain went from being an infection to being cascading scar tissue formation.

I am sick inside. I was prepared to find out there was a massive infection we could not solve. I was not prepared to find out we solved it and killed him in the process.

yes. I know. We did the only thing we could. That does not help me now. He is gone.

[Lotus Vixen]

Continued and prayers, Sheri...


Lori

[Stormyskies]

Oh Sheri!

[AFwife]

Oh Sheri, I wish I could just hug you tight.

[Melody]

I'm so sorry. No words can express how much.

[Stormyskies]

FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 2007 01:25 PM, CST



Sixteen days since he has gone and it seems like a lifetime. Knowing I have 30-40 or more years to go is enough to make me want to just lay down and stop breathing. I am not suicidal at all. Just would not mind dying. If that makes sense.
It is like watching myself from the outside in sometimes. I wonder how I walk around. How did I make those jokes last night? Was that me laughing? Where did that laughter come from? I don't feel it now...as if some refractory surface part of me hit some kind of automatic button and out it came without really glancing off the genuine soul of me. I did not absorb the laughter.

I am sleeping through the night without assistance but having trouble getting going in the morning and ready for a nap by midday, which I can't take due to work. I go for walks on my breaks at work..not for exercise, more just to get into the sun and feel the wind and have time where nobody is watching me.

I feel so imbalanced and unstable inside and know I am appearing incredibly strong and "jackie kennedy'ish" on the outside. I am okay right now wiht this contradiction. I don't want to write on his website. This grief is too private, too solemn, too secret. I harbor it as if it now were my baby. My personal pain. My son is now embodied in my sense of loss and that probably ought to frighten me. I do not want my life to turn into a monument of grief for him. But I do not want to let go even a little bit. Tightly gripped, held to my breast, every little thing of him I can remember I do. today it is the memory of kissing his cold, hard, embalmed cheek in his casket for the last time, brushing my lips softly back and forth, over and over, feeling the sweet fan of his newly regrown lashes for the very last time and wondering where my son is now. How precious that last moment of touch, so unlike all the 13 years of moments before in its chilly distance...my fluttering hands grasping to grip the wind as it blows on by and escapes me forever.

[Charski]

A thousand hugs to you.........

[AFwife]

Originally Posted by Stormyskies

FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 2007 01:25 PM, CST



Sixteen days since he has gone and it seems like a lifetime. Knowing I have 30-40 or more years to go is enough to make me want to just lay down and stop breathing. I am not suicidal at all. Just would not mind dying. If that makes sense.
It is like watching myself from the outside in sometimes. I wonder how I walk around. How did I make those jokes last night? Was that me laughing? Where did that laughter come from? I don't feel it now...as if some refractory surface part of me hit some kind of automatic button and out it came without really glancing off the genuine soul of me. I did not absorb the laughter.

I am sleeping through the night without assistance but having trouble getting going in the morning and ready for a nap by midday, which I can't take due to work. I go for walks on my breaks at work..not for exercise, more just to get into the sun and feel the wind and have time where nobody is watching me.

I feel so imbalanced and unstable inside and know I am appearing incredibly strong and "jackie kennedy'ish" on the outside. I am okay right now wiht this contradiction. I don't want to write on his website. This grief is too private, too solemn, too secret. I harbor it as if it now were my baby. My personal pain. My son is now embodied in my sense of loss and that probably ought to frighten me. I do not want my life to turn into a monument of grief for him. But I do not want to let go even a little bit. Tightly gripped, held to my breast, every little thing of him I can remember I do. today it is the memory of kissing his cold, hard, embalmed cheek in his casket for the last time, brushing my lips softly back and forth, over and over, feeling the sweet fan of his newly regrown lashes for the very last time and wondering where my son is now. How precious that last moment of touch, so unlike all the 13 years of moments before in its chilly distance...my fluttering hands grasping to grip the wind as it blows on by and escapes me forever.

This just breaks my heart. We're praying for you and your family Sheri.

[mis-informed]

Sheri, I am so sorry. I think we all wish we had the words to heal your heart. My fingers have typed and deleted so many times. There are no words. Just know that we are here and that even though you don't know most of us, you are in our hearts.

[AFwife]

Sheri has another post in:

http://www.caringbridge.org/cb/input...josephmorrison

SUNDAY, JANUARY 28, 2007 09:02 PM, CST



Today took me to DFW National Cemetery for the first time. It is such a beautiful place and I feel so fortunate that Joseph was able to be buried in the same place as my father. I had never gone to visit Dad's grave. I just could never bring myself to do it. To see his name, etched in stone, so permanent a change. It was easier to simply move on and not look at it. But Joseph is there now and I cannot move on nor can I be satisfied with trying not to look at it. Even if I look away in my mind, the images are there, like mirrors of the soul, the etchings of his illness and incredible suffering enough to sicken me at times.

It was a gorgeous, glorious, sunny day but cold. I dressed warmly and went by myself. It just seemed right, to go on my own for this, my first visit. I brought yellow daisies and red gerber daisies for both of their graves. I came upon Joseph's area first and got out of the car, my throat already closed up before I had even exited the car. I had expected it to be damp from the rain and ice in the last couple of weeks, but the earth was dry and crumbled, laying over grave after grave, all freshly dug. Nobody had headstones yet on Joseph's row that I could see. I walked along looking at the tiny paper plaques put up temporarily until the simple, elegant headstones can be erected in their perfect symmetry. I was watching for Joseph's name. Suddenly it was before me, not on a tiny paper plaque, but etched into the traditional military headstone, larger than life. Joseph Anthony, his dates of birth and death, his father's name and military branch, Beloved Son and Brother. I sat down on the freshly raked ground and wept as my mind struggled to wrap around the reality of what I was seeing. His headstone was the only one erected yet in his row and it was so dignified, so fitting....and so wrong. So wrong. I cannot wrap my brain around it. I cannot swallow it. I cannot digest it. I wept as I placed the flowers and wept as I sat there in the dirt, the wind whipping cold, defiant of the Texas sun ... and I thought of the days to come, the hot summer ahead, the seasons I will spend hours of my life sitting crisscross in that same spot for years and years ahead of me still. Eventually there will be grass. Eventually that pristine stone will discolor slightly at the bottom (or bleach at the top...I am not clear which causes the coloration change) like the others, like my Dad's has. Eventually perhaps I will learn to feel him, to hear him, to see him again without this sense of futility and anguish. Perhaps I will learn to feel him there and it will become a comfort rather than a talisman of defeat. We won the battle and lost the war.

My weekend has been full. Thank you notes to write, laundry, cooking...I did go out with my friends Saturday night, and for a short while, I felt happy. I felt blessed, at least in that sense. Blessed that the last few years have brought me so many friends to care for me. Blessed that I have people to carry me forward, faith enough for us both that better days will come. I would drift into private thought even in the midst of vibrant conversation, the feathers of grief stroking my soul and pulling me away from the merriment...and my friend's husband Michael, sitting beside me, would just sweetly touch my shoulder and linger a moment, until I looked up, until his smile stimulated mine..and I would come back to the present moment again, once more warmed if not completely touched by the laughter. Baby steps. Good friends are a good start. Thank you.


Still praying for you Sheri and family.

[Lotus Vixen]

Continued prayers, Sheri...


Lori

[Stormyskies]

Sheri, my oldest, dearest friend lost her middle son last August and she's been telling me about how she goes out to the cemetery and just sits with him. My heart just breaks for both of you. I can't imagine what it's like.

[Cyrano]

I'm so sorry, Sheri.

[AFwife]

TUESDAY, JANUARY 30, 2007 12:49 PM, CST



There is a pervading loneliness walking around with me now, almost as if it were its own physical presence. I continue to marvel at the physical symptoms of grief this intense..the back aches, the joint pains, the intense and often overwhelming fatigue. The desire to hide the despair and inner darkness from people, the feeling inside me of weakness and inadequacy. The fear of being incapable of caring appropriately for Nick and Alex. The intense need to be alone. At times an overwhelming desire to simply not speak at all. To go mute. To say nothing. I do not know where that comes from and have not given in to the urge in terms of actually staring at people who talk to me or refusing to answer. I simply back off into my own space, retreat into the quietness of my mind where I can remember him without interruption. My thoughts cascade throughout the day and he is ever with me. Right now I seem to be mostly focused on the last days of his life, sometimes going back a year and a half through his illness. But almost never before that. The further back I go, the more it hurts, the deeper the ache. This too I do not understand but frankly I don't spend a lot of time evaluating it. I contemplated this morning in the car writing about the day of his death and recording that experience. I have not decided yet if I am ready and have not decided if it is something I would want to put here in my blog. I can say that there was none of the peace that I hear others speak of and it did not seem as if he simply was going to sleep. It was not violent but it was not atraumatic either. I did not watch him gently fade. I watched my child die.

I thought too in the car this morning about Traci and Amy, Joseph's main ICU nurses, and the intensity of overwhelming love I feel for them now...how close we got to one another, how much going in there every day when they were there was not the dark and dreaded thing it certainly could have been given Joseph's condition..their compassion, their inner wisdom, their ability to take their cues from me as to the level of interaction desired and the kind of conversation. Their very valued ability to give it to me straight when I was finally ready to hear and also their ability to laugh and cheer me day to day. How much they loved him. How much they let Joseph into their hearts. I miss them. I probably sound like a stalker.

It feels like we have been booted out of the club. All my research on AML. All the other parents going through this. My life has been so surrounded by and wrapped up in Joseph's cancer, pediatric cancer, AML. Now it is all just gone and it is a strange observation to find I could actually miss it. There is all this empty space, not just where Joseph was...but all the things that came to be associated with him.

I am looking forward to the GriefHurts seminar at Cooks' this Saturday. My greatest craving right now is just time to focus on him without interruption. To immerse myself in the enormity of this loss and the brilliant light of his short and courageous life. I just want to be with him and this grief is the only way I have to do that right now.

[Heab]

[CaroleKI61]

Our thoughts and prayers remain with you. love Carole

[AFwife]

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 05, 2007 09:09 AM, CST



The seminar turned out to be a good step for me. The speaker is a well known grief psychologist who lost her own son to a brain tumor 30+ years ago when he was a little over a year old. Seeing that she still hurts for him, that she still chokes up some when talking about the loss underlines the depth and magnitude of this. She likens the place that I am in right now to being "frozen". That I am beginning to "thaw", thus the moments of raw pain but also the moments of emotional nothingness when I wonder what is wrong with me that I am not weeping for him. But she also reassured me this is very normal and that I am not damaging myself, my children, my family or my relationship with Joseph in the way that I am handling things and that was tremendously reassuring. When the pain comes I very much fear I will not be able to find my way back to functioning. She advised me some days I truly may not, and that this is not the same as depression. Grief resembles depression but is very different physiologically in the brain. She did a good job of outlining the differences. She advised my to trust myself. So I will try.

All this reassurance led me to a very confident place yesterday and I was feeling for a time very strong. So I got into the closet where I had stored all of Joseph's Christmas gifts, still wrapped, placed out of sight because of the incredible sorrow they cause us all. I have debated along with Stewart what to do with them, and it is likely we will donate the items to Child Life up at Medical City. But first they would have to be unwrapped and packed up to move. So I sat down in the closet and picked up a box from one of his chemo angels and opened it up. Suddenly I was just lost in the most enormous, engulfing pain that lingers with me still today. Most of his gifts I didn't even know what was in inside them. We had so many people send us things already wrapped for him. I watched myself open it and it hit me my hands were doing what his hands should have done and when the item came into view and it was something he would have been so excited for, that was so appropriate for him, it descended on me in a sorrow that has no match and no words. He never even got to open his Christmas gifts. He lost interest in all packages and presents about a week before he went on the ventilator. All the natural excitement, energy and curiosity of being young was stolen, not only from him but from the rest of us to enjoy WITH him. Christmas of 2005 was the last Christmas we got with Joseph and it is already more than a year behind us. Hollow hollow hollow hollow hollow. There is suddenly an enormous hole in my chest, not just an emotional metaphor but an actual true to life feeling. I feel as if I ought to be able to stick my hand in there and feel my heart missing or my ribcage caving in and giving way to atrophy. Shriveled and crouching and wasting away. I do not understand how it is that I breathe from one moment to the next. Did you know that we went to Give Kids the World from Jan 2 -9, 2006? He was just declared to be in remission and it was our trip with Make A Wish. We saw it as an end to the sorrow and suffering and a kick off to happier days ahead. We had such a beautiful, wonderful time. January 10, 2007 Joseph lost his life. From the day we got home from that trip a countdown had started that we were not even aware of. How grateful I am we did what he wanted to for his birthday last May, that we took that trip in September to San Antonio, that I never said "no" when he wanted me to go to the store to find him something different to eat.

Alexander has been running a low grade fever on and off since yesterday. It is a strange feeling to realize that fevers are just childhood fevers again and to try to deal with them on that level. He could not sleep last night and wept a great deal. We are all so lost without him.

My Prayers continue to be with you Sheri and your family.

[Stormyskies]

Oh my Sheri, my heart just goes out to you all.

[Stormyskies]

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 06, 2007 07:15 AM, CST



Alexander's fever has gone from about 99.1 on Sunday to about 100.2 yesterday to 102.9 today. Those who know us know Alex has his own health issues. So far he is able to keep his medications down, but Stewart is taking him to the pediatrician today. We ar