"Nothing Compares 2 U"

September 2013:

I have never faced anything as hard as losing Milo, not in my fifty years of life. My father is a recovering alcoholic. My parents divorced when I was 9.  My formerly stay-at-home mom left us alone and went to work. We moved from a spacious ranch-y type home to a duplex.  My mom hit the bars and my dad remarried.   I (eventually) became best friends with my step-mother, but in 1986 she and my father divorced. I got pretty close to being divorced in my 10^th year of marriage. Divorce sucks. I've had peri-menopause since I was 37. I have been on antidepressants since I was 37. I moved 3,000 miles from family and friends (including my first grandchild, who was still in the womb) and yet I unequivocally state, “I have never gone through anything as painful as losing Mighty Milo.”

It's so funny, not my aforementioned devastation, which isn't funny at all, but the opinions that we, or maybe I should just say, “I,” because I don't really know what's in someone else's head, do I . . . the opinions that I have formed of myself. For instance, I have always thought of myself as any open person, an open book, really—hahahahahaha! or in Spanish, jajajajajaja!—but I can't write a journal, because I am afraid someone will read it. I can't talk about Milo, because I am afraid someone will see me cry. I may share my thoughts, after I have thought about them and formulated exactly how I feel, but on the fly? Not really. Got to keep that happy face and not let anyone but my husband see me cry. If I am arguing with my husband and we pull up to the drive-thru window at McDonald's I immediately smile and converse with the window person. One would never know that I was in the middle of verbally duking it out! Yeah, I'm open alright. Perhaps, this is why I seem to be dealing with my pain within my home and within myself and finding it so difficult to accept the heartfelt condolences of loving friends and kind acquaintances.

I Am Milo's Nona

and nothing will ever change that, “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us”.¹ And I miss the him that I can hold.

The other day, at a homeschool park day, I met a new friend. She was very excited to meet a mom of a certain age (An age that is older than hers.) and in a similar situation as hers. Basically, an older mom with grown children, but who still has a grade school aged child at home. In her excitement at meeting such a person she was asking a plethora of questions . . . if my grown children were boys or girls, their names and ages, where they all live, if they are married, and then, one of my favorite questions, “Do your children have children?” Now, if you know me, but at all, you will know that two of my children DO have children and that I'm pretty excited about those children. I love the fact that they all have Filipino blood, but keep turning out blond and now we have two red heads--one not even in the family where we might have expected a red head! Maybe I should be a genetics scientist (I'm sure that's not the formal title.), because this stuff fascinates me, but I digress. I responded, “Yes, yes they do!”. The next question, which I should have expected but didn't, was: “How many does your oldest have?” So hard. Way too hard. I usually say, “Three”, because that is how many my oldest, Kassie, has. She has three: Ezekiel (Ezo), Jude, and Milo Benjamin or as my husband, Orville says, “Milo Been-Jamin”. So why the dilemma today? Well, it had been a tough week—missing Milo wise. I had spent the night before crying until 2:00 a.m. I had the type of crying time where you think you're done, but then you start again and it's even more intense. So, I hesitated before answering. I really didn't want to lose it in front of this poor woman who was just trying to be nice or the rest of the women who may or may not know 'Milo's Story'. I'm really not great at losing it in front of anyone, except my poor husband, and even he is sometimes at a loss in knowing how to deal with it. Actually, he is an expert when it's the ugly cry, it is when the tears are random that he seems to be thrown off. I have never gone through anything as hard as this. Not the question, but the tragedy that made the question one that gave me pause. The absolute tragedy of losing our Milo.

1Romans 8:38-39 New International Version (NIV)