Triggers and half her life

I need a place to vent my grief thoughts and maybe, hopefully, be an encouragement to others who are grieving. If this seems to work, I'll go backwards and tell my story.

But for now, 20 months after the murder of my 19 year old son, what is on my mind are TRIGGERS. I think of him every day, but as time goes by, it seems the memories are the same ones. His pictures never change, nothing is new, he is gone.

I find myself hating it when I lose a "memory trigger". The store I took him to buy his new guitar has been made into something else. Streets are rerouted as the city grows, or buildings are torn down to make room for growth -- buildings that hold memories of times with my son.

So it's hard to change things in the house. It took me a long time to take down the gate guarding the TV, etc., from my granddaughter (HIS daughter, who we are now raising) because HE rigged it up to fit the area, very ingeniously so that she could not thwart it.

I cried when I took it down, remembering his pride, marveling at his ingenuity, cursing the loss of another memory trigger.

I did save a bit of cord he'd used, so that now when I open the "junk drawer" I see the cord and think of the gate and his cleverness.

The other thing on my mind is that this Friday will be 20 months since my precious son died. His daughter was 20 months old when he was killed, so she has now lived half her life with her Dad and half her life without her Dad.

I ache, I mourn such a senseless loss.