22 April 2017
I think what’s happened is that I’ve accepted it. Not in any kind of “it’s okay” way. In fact, I’m not sure that acceptance is the right word.
You could say I’ve accepted the reality of it. The finality–in this realm, at least.
It’s more that my cognitive dissonance has cleared. For the last 4 years I have not been able to reconcile what happened with my beliefs about what I expected to happen or what should have happened. My belief that something like this couldn’t or wouldn’t happen to my child or to me.
I think I have stopped fighting reality. I see that this is my life now: I will not see both of my children grow up. I will never see Vaughn again on this earth. My life, no matter what happens in it–good, bad, unremarkable–will be without Vaughn, at least without Vaughn in the flesh, until the day I die.
So it is not a happy acceptance. It is more of a sad realization that my beliefs about what can or should happen are pure imagination.
Nevertheless, it may be some kind of grim progress. It may give me some sort of floor from which to rise.
Vaughn's Mom 