Cool Air and Hurt

It was hard to fall asleep last night. There’s a window over the head of the bed and the breeze was coming through it strong and cool. I was tired but not sleepy and I couldn’t get my mind off of Owen. Earlier he had come downstairs yelling and I could hear in his voice that something wasn’t right. He gotten a post on his instagram account that somebody he was friends with on there had killed themself.

I held him as he cried. I asked him to get his phone so I could see it. I wondered if it was real and began trying to look up things to validate it. Of course I couldn’t figure it out and then I wondered why I was doing that. In a sense it doesn’t matter. The loss is real, whether he knew her only online. It is real and it is heartbreaking. Painful to him and painful to watch as parents.

We went upstairs and laid in the dark together. I talked to him about the fact that we never really know what’s going on with other people, so we just have to try to be as good a friend as we can, but that we can only be responsible for ourselves. He said he didn’t know what to do. I told him that crying and feeling sad was the right response, and I told him that he can always come to me with problems, no matter what it is. And I held him close and felt his breath on me just like when he was a baby.

He finally went to bed. I tossed and turned for awhile, trying different music and finding none that was quite right. Eventually I fell asleep snuggled under a blanket with the cool air blowing over me.

My sweet pea.