What we really want out of life?

What is it that we really want to do in this world?  I think that many of us feel that it is to leave our mark on the future, in some way or another.  I didn't used to care about anything but the present, but then I finally grew up.  Once I dated a woman who had children, and it didn't work out.  I decided that from then on I would only be interested in women without children, or I would never be "number one" in her life.  So what happened?  Yeah, I fell in love with a woman who had two kids.  And I married her.  Suddenly, I was a parent.  Kind of, they were HER kids, and I was helping her raise them.  (And believe me, they didn't make it easy.)
So, what happens?  Yeah, you guessed it - I actually came to love them as if they had been my biological children, too.  But that was my stumbling block - again, they weren't "my" kids.  As I got older I started feeling like I was leaving nothing to the future.  One reason I got into doing stained glass - any piece I do has a reasonable chance of still being around somewhere in hundreds of years.  So, I was able to leave "something" to the future, but it wasn't really satisfying in that respect.  (I still love doing the work, though - it's fun!)
But a funny thing happened to me, as the kids became adults.  They never let me forget what an important part of their lives I was, how much I meant to them, and I came to realize - I HAD "my" kids all along, I was just too dumb to see it.  So for the past several years, I no longer feel that I'm leaving nothing to the future - I leave two wonderful human beings that carry in them that part of me which makes me what I am.  Not my genes, but my values.  I had my investment in the future returned to me in full.  And more.

And then, completely unexpectedly, I had half of that future taken away from me.  My son, who I struggled with for those many years, was gone.  I've lost part of the future. 
Your kids are your investment in the future.  It may be cliche, but I've come to realize cliches get to be cliche because there's truth behind them.  I finally had a future even after I was gone from this world, and I've lost half of that.  (Daughter, you'd better outlive me.  Us.  Both your mom and I would be totally lost without you.)

Perhaps that's what makes the loss of a child "the most devastating loss of all."  Your children are the future of the world, you want to be part of that through them, this is such a primal need in all of us that it's the driving force behind almost everything we do.  Eating?  Of course, you need energy to raise kids.  Breathe?  C'mon.  Sex?  How else do you have kids?  "Investing in the future" is what we do.  And when we are secure in that we've raised our kids to be the best human beings they can, we can finally relax that primal need.  We've done it.  We did our jobs as human beings.  And then you lose that.  Instantly. 

Lose your parents?  You knew they were going to go before you.
Lose your siblings?  Well, you guys did grow apart as you grew older.
Lose your spouse?  Well, you can always find another.
Lose your child?  Well, uh, er, you've lost your future.

They say those who've lost a child can only really empathize with others who've lost children, but I can't even imagine what it's like to lose your ONLY child.  (The line, "well, you've got another one" is cruel, but there's a grain of truth to it - you still have an investment in the future.  Not true if you've lost your only child - and worse if you're too old to have another.)

And now I'm rambling again.  I'll try to summarize.  I postulate that our most primal urge is to influence the future, we do that through our children.  And that's why the loss of a child is more devastating than any other loss.  Losing a child is like losing the future, and short-circuiting that primal drive.

(ring-ring)  My wife's cell phone went off.  What the...it's 5:45 in the morning, who'd be calling now?  And I was going to sleep in a bit...

  She answered, after looking at the caller id, "Hi, son, what's up?" "What!"  "Honey, get up.  Tim's dead."  (It wasn't Tim, it was Ken, his biological father and roommate.  He had woken up and found Tim on the floor.  He had been dead for some time.) 

That was the end of our lives as we knew them, and the start of a new one.  One where we no longer had a son.

It's been six months since we got the news.  Six months to the minute that I officially start this blog.  Somehow that feels appropriate.

Six months.  How can it have been so long, where has the time gone?  That's not a paradox, it's been an entire lifetime for us, but the pain is so strong it still feels like it just happened.  

After we got that call, the first thing I did was call my boss and tell her, "I won't be in today."  "Okay.  Why?"  "My son is dead."  "Oh, well, I'll see you in a couple of weeks."  She knew Tim lived across the country, and I'd need a long week to take care of things.  I then got dressed and went to my doctor's appointment.  (That's why I was going to sleep in -- I was taking that morning off to go see him, but it was a mid-morning appointment.)  He was quite sympathetic, and was surprised that I was there.  But logically I knew I had to take care of myself, too - and it was a consult based on my latest blood tests.  (Good news, folks -- red yeast rice and fish oil can indeed help with your cholesterol levels!)  Oh, and I had to cancel my next-day therapist's appointment, they charge $50 if you give less than 24 hours notice of a cancellation.  Later that day, though, I saw him in passing as I took my wife to her psychiatrist's appointment (one which we definitely needed to get her to) and told him what happened.  

  Somewhere in there, I was able to make airplane, hotel, and car rental reservations.  We were in Florida the next night.  And I wonder why anyone would ever want to live there.  We set one foot outside the West Palm Beach airport at 10:30 pm, and suddenly felt like we were swimming in the air.  Talk about humidity!  In fact, the whole week the weather was like something out of Hell -- hot, humid, heavy rain, thunder and lightning -- which somehow seemed to be right.

  Unless you are also a parent who has lost a child, never - NEVER - tell a grieving parent, "I know how you feel."  You don't.  You can't.  Our children are our future, our investment in the survival of our species, the continuation of our bloodlines (okay, that one doesn't apply to the step-father, except by proxy).  They are what we want the world to know us by.  They are our hopes, our dreams, our (insert cliche here.)  But they are.  They are what we live for, they are what we die for.  For them to die before us is just so against the natural order of what we are, that the loss of that future makes us wonder what we have left.  Of course, we can't follow our children.  Okay, we can, and some have - but does that honor them, or shame us?  

  Oh, you may notice I'm free-associating here a bit.  Well, I do that.  It's how I think.  I have A.D.D. -- which was one reason why Tim and I related, I could understand his A.D.H.D.  We both would sometimes range all over the place in conversation, but it worked for us.  God, I miss that boy.

  I think I'll stop for now, it's hard to formulate what I want to say.  But stay tuned -- I intend in the future of this blog to explore my feelings as that happen, and as they happened in the past six months.  I will question the nature of our existence.  I will laugh along with my grieving parents as I post "things not to say to a grieving parent."  (Example: "I know how you feel, I had a goldfish that died once.")  I will open up to honest discussion through comments (but retain the rights to edit, being the blog owner.  Hey, if you want first amendment speech, write your own blog!)  And on this journey, I hope to find some healing myself.  And perhaps help share what I've learned with others, to maybe help them in their processes.