Pause (3)

The other day we were at the lake and I was watching Joe jump into the lake and Andrew popped into my head. Without a moments noticed I found myself wondering what his laugh would sound like next to Joe's. The thought fluttered out of my thoughts almost as quickly as it had entered. I have those thoughts often, but don't pause long to think much of them.
Then a few days later I found myself rocking in Zachy's room and singing lullibies to him when I noticed he was fast a sleep. I continued singing anyway and noticed soon that I had been crying. Andrew would be five next month. Has it really been that long? I have lived and breathed five years on this earth without my sweet son.
Five years.
I still go to HUGS meeting regularly. I remember early after the boys were born someone tried to comfort me by saying that in time my heart would heal. I remember how much that pissed me off. What do you know about losing your son? My heart will never heal.
And I don't think that it will. Not really.
My heart has a hole. A wound left open that night when Andrew left me. That hole can't and won't be replaced. While I found with the days that it did scab over, sometimes in the night it will rip right off and I'm right back there, in that moment, the wound as raw as ever.
And then I breathe again.
I thank God for Peace. Peace of heart after those moments where you just don't feel like your heart will beat again.
I was going through Andrew's journal the other day when I came across something that tugged at my heart. Instead of telling the newer members of the HUGS family that, "things get better in time" I shared with them a poem.
It goes like this:

Peace of heart will come when you hardly notice

Like the first star in the evening sky

You need not strive for it or seek it

It will find you as surely as light dawns, as purely as water bubbles from a mountain spring

Time goes by and peace of heart tiptoes softly into your days and whispers in the night

Be still

All will be well

I am here.