A letter to Dahlia

Sometimes I dream of you at night, I don’t know if I like those dreams or hate them. Sometimes I see your smile, and hear your laugh. Waking up and remembering you aren’t there is so heartbreaking. All the pain of the last six months comes rushing back. The memories of your attack, the knowledge that you have been murdered, the knowing that you will never come back. I have to lay in bed for a little while before I can get up, I have to remind myself all the reasons that I have to get up. I tell myself that I need to get up and wake your brothers and sisters up, have them get ready for school. But all the time I am thinking how all I want to do is lay in bed and sleep so hard I never wake up.

I get up and go through the motions of my day. I have to tell myself over and over the things I need to do to appear normal. Right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. Wake the kids up, go downstairs, make coffee, shower, get dressed. I have to say these things to myself constantly or I will forget what I am suppose to do. I found myself buttoning my shirt completely wrong today, I had to undo all the buttons and do them all again. It was like I had lost the ability to button my own shirt. I am told the memory loss may get better, no one really knows for sure.

Memory loss, comes along with trauma, the trauma of losing you. I’m told I don’t have to be a be a part of the attack to have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, that my close attachment to you was enough. I am told that the bond between a mother and a child is so strong that to us the loss of a child is the most traumatic event we can have. Imagine me suffering from something soldiers of war suffer from, and I have never been out of the country. Could you ever have believed that your strong and capable mother could become such an emotional wreck?

I am trying to be happy, because I know that you would never want me to be sad. I try to find little things to smile over every day. Every smile brings a ton of tears behind it, the guilt of finding any happiness without you is unbearable sometimes. I wonder sometimes if I will ever feel true happiness again, or if it will always be a halfway feeling. How can I be truly happy without you?

I miss you so much every day, I try not to think about you because the pain is unbearable and then I feel guilt because I tried to forget. I try to think of ways every day that I can turn back time. I just need to go to the day before, that is all I need. I just need that one day back, if I can have that one day I can change everything. I wouldn’t lose you that way, your sister never would’ve been injured, and the rest of us wouldn’t have to go through a life without you.

I beg everyday for your forgiveness, I was your mother and I did not protect you when you needed me to. I should’ve known what was going to happen. Protecting you was my job and I should’ve known. What kind of mother am I, when I couldn’t protect my own child? I’m told it wasn’t my fault, I wasn’t there, there is no way I could’ve known or protected you. I should’ve felt it, sensed it, my intuition as your mother should’ve told me. I failed you and I am sorry.