Sometimes It Seems Too Much

I am tired and I can't sleep. This has been for a while now.  My brain keeps going after I am supposed to be getting some shut eye.  I have been sleeping on the couch, because I find it easier to fall asleep watching infomercials as opposed to my continually spinning to-do list that my mind is formulating and revising at all moments in time. The night before last, I got up and made the dough, because what else do you do at 2:13am when your FF is on shift and you can't sleep.  DUH!

First 9 done, wrapped and ready to go.

Yesterday, the compound cranked out THIRTY cookie cakes for Fire PreventionWeek.  We had the two ovens going non stop, from just about the time mass let out until nearly dinner time.  Then the sirens came, directly behind us.  Two Firewives that we are, we step out on the veranda to take a look see.  And our stomachs dropped.  Now, I am new to the neighborhood, but everyone has been so welcoming.  You feel like you've known them forever.  First an engine and the med unit right behind it.  Not a good sign.  And they stayed in the house - no one came out.  Not a good sign.  The engine did not leave once the meds were on scene - not a good sign.  It seemed like they were there forever.  The BLS Vultures were in front and they left.  Not a good sign.

Much prettier at the firehouse than in my backyard.

Then mom came out, with a look I cannot describe, but is forever in grained in my mind.  It was a look of a lost soul. She lost her 21 year-old son.  He was home for the weekend.  He just helped our boys rake their lawn.  Went to his room to work on some homework and never responded to the call for dinner.  She went up to get him and she found there - blue.  Her husband called 911 while she did CPR until Med 15 got there.  What do you say?  She just got done working her boy in the eternity that it took for help to arrive. There are no words.  There was nothing we could say.  I felt helpless.  I could never be a fire fighter.  I am too much of a control freak, if there is a problem, I want to fix it.  This couldn't be fixed.  I wanted to do something and couldn't do a single thing.  Her family was there quite quickly and I was ever so grateful that they were not alone with their grief.

Worst part of this WHOLE story, as if the heartbreak was not enough of losing one son.  She just buried her older son - 24 - 2 weeks ago.  How does a mother cope with losing both her boys in less than a month?  How do we as mothers, who feel her pain and yet cannot BEGIN to imagine her pain, support her?  What do you say?  How do you help?  You can't take the pain away, it will forever be burned on her heart.  Scars heal and made fade, but they are still ALWAYS there.

So, what else is there to do, but hug your kids.  I scooped them up and hugged them tight.  I kissed them over and over.  And we dropped off the cookies to Daddy's station (why wait until Monday)- waited in the fire house kitchen with the Battalion Chief until both rigs got back.  Enjoyed the smiles on the guys' faces as they grabbed their cookies by the  slice (imagine a pizza slice) and headed off to watch some Sunday Night Football like the teenage boys I have grown to love through my classroom.  Took in the smiles on the muppets faces' as Daddy loved them in his second home.  Then swept them up and off to bed, with some more love on the way.

It was the only thing that I could do to ease the ache that I had no right to feel.  Hug my kids.  I could still do that and I felt so guilty.  I felt like I was gloating in her grief.

I got them home and  settled in and I was determined to sleep in my own bed for a change; it has probably been a month of Green shifts since I last slept there alone.  I chatted with a dear friend of mine, while I tried to make sense of the whole scene.  I finally broke down and took some Tylenol PM, just to shut my head up for one night.  I drifted off into quiet of the dark night.

Here I am at the end of the school day, still a little hung-over, in a Zombie like state from the sleep aid, but it shut my head up for a night.  One night where I did not listen to my thoughts or have an argument with the Big Guy over what is fair.  It is not my place to ask why and yet here I am once again, asking why?  My FF is home tonight and I have more cookies to deliver.  Hopefully the sleep last night gave me the reserves I need to sort out the details in my cerebral hard drive and make peace with the Big Guy. Or at least ask him to look over another grieving family

Love your kids with all your heart.  Some day they just might not be here to bug you while you are trying to get stuff done.  There is no need to wish you had enjoyed it while they were bugging you, when you can start right now.  Embrace the constant stalling "I love you, Mom-my" hugs in the robot  voice and the requests to help with dinner even though it is easier to do it without them.

Hug your kids tight and kiss your firefighters goodnight.  There are way too many uncertainties for anything else.