I wonder if there will ever be a day where I feel ‘normal.’ Right, relative term. But I mean in the sense that I don’t constantly feel the heavy burden of grief dragging at every part of my body, willing me to want sleep over any other state.

I’ve had plenty of ‘good’ days. But since my angel went to Heaven, I feel different from everyone else.

I know other loss parents. And some offer comfort. But those parents also know, every parent’s loss of their child is the hardest most tragic loss. They all feel pain. They all miss their babies. They all wish for just one moment to touch, feel, hear, or hold their babies again. But no one truly knows the pain of losing that child.

Even spouses and partners feel differently. They suffered the same loss, miss the same child, endured the same trauma. But the feeling, the emotion, the longing is different for each person.

And I don’t know about everyone, but for me, my loss is so defining. I feel so much comfort from people who knew my angel. I love being around those that had the opportunity to really comprehend what it was that I lost. Because to me, that triumphant, beautiful, unique three-year-old was absolutely incomparable to any other being that has ever or will ever exist.

And having people around me that really get that, makes this burden easier.

But today, four years after his loss, I am surrounded by people who have only known me afterward. Post living, breathing, growing angel. I am now this person who lost her son.

And though I don’t introduce myself that way, nor do I bring it up intentionally, or without a begging question, it one-hundred-percent absolutely defines who I am.

So if any person is going to get to know me in any capacity will eventually know that I am the mother of a perfect angel in Heaven.

But the people I now call colleagues, and some even friends, know the me that came after. And sometimes, in the hardest moments when tears are the only option, they can’t bring comfort. They want to. They offer. But they didn’t know him. And they can’t snap me back to joy the way someone with one particular memory of something he did that was so precious, can.

And the mothers at school. They, too, know me as the mother of our angel on Earth. Some know of our angel in Heaven, but none knew me before.

Before this moment in time that changed me fundamentally. That made me know and understand the true meaning of love, and the true meaning of absolute heartbreak.

So how, in this new world of mine, am I ever going to find balance between the two me’s? Because there are two. There is the me before and the me after. And the me after is really struggling to fit into the after world.

The world not filled with understanding doctors, and nurses, and therapists, and caregivers. And instead filled with people who have led virtually perfect lives with cozy homes, beautiful children, and successful careers.

How do I find a way to forgive myself for not being the me from before, and find comfort in this new world that just doesn’t seem to understand?

I wonder.