The grief contest...

Grief is a strange contest sometimes. I've been told it's harder to lose a child than a teenager; that grandparents grieve harder than parents; that it's worse to watch a loved one fade away, ravaged by cancer; it's more painful to lose a spouse, a daughter, an infant, a war hero. People like to tell me about friends and relatives who've suffered worse or the same or more. I, however, believe grief is relative to what we've lost in the past. I have suffered grief before in my life; I miscarried a baby at 13 weeks and buried my father when he was 67 years old. The grief I live this day is Logan. I knew him from 2 weeks after his conception. He grew inside me. His heart grew under mine, from mine; it beat within the same body mine does. That body bears scars from him. I have silver stretch marks, some a quarter-inch wide, where my abdomen grew beyond its limits to hold him within me. When it was time, I pushed him, all eight-plus pounds of him, from inside me and out into the waiting world. I counted his toes and fingers. I diapered him. I cried when breast feeding didn't work for us and I was forced to put him on formula. I rubbed him down with udder balm, head to toe, every night, to soothe his chronic eczema. I held his hand and encouraged him to walk. I helped him form his first words and taught him to wipe his own butt. I taught him to tie his shoes, zip his pants, button his shirts, and use scissors. We practiced ABCs, learned to write his name, memorized his address and phone number. We read books, drew pictures, and shared dreams. He bought me beautiful gifts, like huge earrings shaped like stop signs, and a necklace Cleopatra would have envied. I encouraged him to walk away from the bullies who picked on him at noon and stole his lunch. I bribed him into taking a summer school class in 8th grade to help him organize his thought patterns. I encouraged him to keep smiling while he waited for the best time to put braces on his buck teeth. I knew what he loved to eat, enjoyed reading, hated to wear, and dreamed about seeing. I bought his underwear, his socks, his jeans, his toothpaste. I taught him to parallel park.  I helped him choose all of the things he'd need to furnish a college dorm room. And then one day, I was told he was dead. I never saw his face again, just the closed casket that I assume held his broken body. There was no slow progression to death, no sweet goodbye, no sorries, no I love you, and no final kiss to his brow. He was gone. And, while I can appreciate the blessings in the way that he left, I can't seem to appreciate anyone else pointing them out to me. They are mine alone to count and hold in my aching chest. God whispers them into my ear and I know that He reads my heart and knows all of the things that my lips cannot lift to Him in prayer. He knows I have been angry, felt guilty, and wished beyond wishing that it had been me instead. This is the loss and the grief that I know. Nolo contendere.