I have been selfish. In the last week, I have been so concentrated on controlling my temper, trying not to cry, distracting myself from the fact that the one year anniversary of losing my son is just days away, and replaying the last days I had with him.

I have been coping. I stay quiet rather than conversing to avoid emotion. When I am alone, I cry. I mourn and I ache the absence of my sweet, lost little man. The glue once holding my broken pieces melts and the foundation of strength built over the last year is crumbling.

As I remember our last days, I am losing him all over again. And in that loss, all else that surrounds me lessens in importance, shrinks in size. The loss, hurt, and yearning grows stronger, taller, heavier, while the noises, responsibilities and necessities of life fade to silence.

In these days, the memories are all that I hold. The pain is all I feel. The loss is all I comprehend. My grief is my own small world. There is nothing else.

A few more days and life will return again. I will remember and understand that my baby is safe, healthy and happy in Heaven.

I will feel a little more whole, a tiny bit human and begin to care how I look, where I’m going, the quality of my work, how I treat those around me. I will become part of this larger world in which I live and I will work to be good, I will care for those around me, I will engage.

But today, and maybe tomorrow, and maybe another day still, I will hide in my tortured small world of grief, where only my pain and I exist.