Today started off like any other day. I woke up, touched Jensen’s urn, and thanked God I made it through another night. When I was out of bed, I talked to Jensen and told him what I had planned for the rest of the day: work, therapy, clean the house, and then the blink-182 concert tonight. The morning went seemingly ‘normal,’ until it came time for therapy. That’s when I learned about the hurt in healing.

My favorite little button nose.

It hit me, today is Tuesday. My son died on a Tuesday and it wasn’t the first thing that popped in my mind. It’s been eighteen weeks and that doom that I’ve felt on every Tuesday since he’s been born, skipped today. Honestly, I didn’t even process this usually huge trigger day, until I was mid-conversation with my counselor. I was talking about healing and trying my best to continue moving forward in this life after loss. Then I realized I’m healing more than I realize each day. Instead of doom, I felt thankful to be alive and that I was able to touch Jensen’s urn. Instead of crying all morning, I talked to Jensen about what I’m looking forward to doing in the day. This Tuesday wasn’t as heavy as any other one.

Then I was angry. How could the connection with this day be overlooked? I figured every Tuesday for the rest of my life would be daunting, but today was lighter. My mind is battling itself whether I want to heal or hurt. I’m angry that I can’t have Jensen here. It upsets me that I can’t see him in his swing right now, just enjoying the day. But, he’s not here and that pain stays with my every second of the day. Grief is exhausting and makes you think horrible ideas. I ask, every night, for there to be some relief in my day and when there was… I broke down. The second it processed it my brain that I forgot it was Tuesday, I couldn’t stop crying. My brain is confusing healing with forgetting.

There is hurt in healing. Healing does not mean forgetting my son or this story of love and loss. It means gaining more seconds of relief and not being fully consumed by this sea of grief. Even though I pray and ask for these light moments, it hurts. It feels like I’m breaking the connection I have to Jensen. I feel like the only time people think about Jensen is when I’m in pain or in tears. People whisper his name so I don’t feel worse. When I’d much rather just talk about him. He makes me smile more than anything else in the world. But, it hurts to feel this healing. Smiling can feel like the biggest betrayal; how can there be happiness when my whole world ended? There shouldn’t be any happy thoughts in this world where babies and children die. It hurts, but sadness and pain is not the only connection I have to him.

Even if I’m healing the best I can be and I forget that it’s Tuesdays to just be able to live a semi-‘normal’ life, no one can take the past away from me. The past is already woven into the blanket of my past. Jensen is forever stitched there and he can’t be pulled out. That happiness of seeing him wiggling around on the ultrasounds screen or how he would kick when he would get chocolate milk, can never be erased from my memory. Although it hurts that I’ll never get any new memories of Jensen, I’m healing. And just because Jensen died, does not mean his story just ends. My past is made up with Jensen and my present and future will continue being woven with the importance of his life to me.

My life has to move forward and I will eventually heal and feel the hurt that goes with it. This healing will come in different ways and today was just another way to show that I slowly am. Tuesdays will take a toll on me, but I will make it through them. I will heal. Through healing and the hurt that it brings, I know that my son will never be forgotten. Jensen is forever intertwined with my past, present, and future.