Do you speak with God?

Elijah,
Do you speak with God? Can you ever hear my cries? Are you just so free from pain and your body now that you never look back? I miss you so much it physically hurts. Does God ever grant people favors? I feel like He doesn't hear me. I feel like answered prayers are a thing of the past. I can't feel His love at all, but maybe you could reach Him. Maybe you could ask Him to either let you come tell me you do live on and that you are happy or you could ask Him to usher in the end of days so we can see you again. This pain is crushing. I still can't believe you're gone. I still want you back. I feel like I'm going crazy, like they're going to have to admit me to the mental ward in the hospital. Will this nightmare ever end? Others have tried pointing me to my blessings and I know I'm one of the richest people on earth but I'm drowning in heartache. All the riches in the world can't replace you. Do you know that?
I love you Elijah.
Mom

Your Influence

Do you know how amazing you were? Do you know how much you were loved? Can you know how much you're missed?

The Tears Won't Stop

Elijah,
Please come back to me. My tears don't stop. They're always there under the surface. Constant aching in my heart. Thoughts of you in pain; thoughts of you wanting to live; your fear of going to sleep and not waking up came true. Your life ended. Somehow part of my life did too. Sometimes I feel like a zombie; I'm going through the motions but my heart isn't in it. I wish for your sake I could appreciate this life I have but I miss you so much. Please come back to me. Please. You told me you'd always be here in the morning. I know you didn't control living or dying. If you could, you would have lived. If I could control living and dying I would have died for you.

People say the Savior knows my pain and felt my pain. I just can't connect with that anymore. Right now I don't care what he felt because I feel so full of pain. I am starting to hate that poem about two sets of footprints in the sand and then only one and that's when the Savior says, "I didn't leave you alone, that's when I carried you." I think that's such a crock. He's not carrying this. This is my cross, my burden. He's not making it easier to bear. It's fucking hard. Sorry for using that word but I need the worst word I know to describe how incredibly hard this is.

And I'm so tired of feeling like I have to feel guilty for being mad at God, for not believing in God, for not caring much about Christ. It feels like a belief out of fear and not out of love. That's what really bothers me. Why does religion cause me to feel so guilty and afraid? How is that making the most of my life? I'm so mixed up, messed up, confused, sad, alone. Incredibly alone. Though family and friends are there for me, this is not something anyone else can remove or bear. I can't take the pain from my own children's hearts. Everything about this sucks to the moon and back.

I miss you so much.

The Tears Won't Stop

Elijah,
Please come back to me. My tears don't stop. They're always there under the surface. Constant aching in my heart. Thoughts of you in pain; thoughts of you wanting to live; your fear of going to sleep and not waking up came true. Your life ended. Somehow part of my life did too. Sometimes I feel like a zombie; I'm going through the motions but my heart isn't in it. I wish for your sake I could appreciate this life I have but I miss you so much. Please come back to me. Please. You told me you'd always be here in the morning. I know you didn't control living or dying. If you could, you would have lived. If I could control living and dying I would have died for you.

People say the Savior knows my pain and felt my pain. I just can't connect with that anymore. Right now I don't care what he felt because I feel so full of pain. I am starting to hate that poem about two sets of footprints in the sand and then only one and that's when the Savior says, "I didn't leave you alone, that's when I carried you." I think that's such a crock. He's not carrying this. This is my cross, my burden. He's not making it easier to bear. It's fucking hard. Sorry for using that word but I need the worst word I know to describe how incredibly hard this is.

And I'm so tired of feeling like I have to feel guilty for being mad at God, for not believing in God, for not caring much about Christ. It feels like a belief out of fear and not out of love. That's what really bothers me. Why does religion cause me to feel so guilty and afraid? How is that making the most of my life? I'm so mixed up, messed up, confused, sad, alone. Incredibly alone. Though family and friends are there for me, this is not something anyone else can remove or bear. I can't take the pain from my own children's hearts. Everything about this sucks to the moon and back.

I miss you so much.

God can't be real

You watch as we suffer needlessly. You watch as we inflict so much hurt on each other. You watch as so much terrible heartache goes on in the world and we're told this is for our good. We're supposed to want to be like you. I don't want to be like you. I don't want to stand by as my children kill each other, as my children starve, as my children suffer diseases I could fix. On this earth if a parent withholds food from his child, he goes to jail, not a heavenly place like a 5 star resort. If a parent stands by and watches as others abuse his child, that parent goes to jail and is despised by others; that person is generally not someone we want as our leader let alone our God. Yeah, we're getting to the point where we are becoming like you. We elect presidents who are unfaithful and inflict pain on their spouses. When we do that, we're like you. We look for reasons why people should not be held accountable for the egregious acts they do to one another. Just like we have to make up reasons why you could stand by and watch. And yet I'm so brain-washed I can't not believe you exist and are doing these things for some great purpose. It's just sick. I'm so tired of it all.

If Only Dreams Were Real

Elijah, I dreamt about you last night. Finally. A most interesting dream. Not sure what to do with it but I'm writing it down. Dad and I were laying in bed talking. We had such heavy hearts and sadness. We were drowning in your loss. Our room seemed to be the one here in Orem but I could see a refection in the mirror in the bathroom. As Dad and I were crying I looked out our bedroom door and saw a little moving light. I asked Dad if he could see it. He turned his head and said yes that it was probably a reflection in the mirror of the street light outside, but it was moving. The next instance we see your face materialize over the bed and you say, "It's me!" After you said that you appeared between me and Dad in bed as a baby. You slowly were growing in such a natural way into a toddler. You told me you missed me so much. You were torn between God (as you pointed towards my closet) and us. I asked you if you could see God and you pointed to Him and said, "Yes, he's right there." Then you told us God was letting you come back for us to raise again. You kept growing between us and while growing you showed us you and a girl, Natalie in a car (it was a cross between a station wagon and a hearse.) Jonny was driving and either Jared or Jentry was in the front while you were laying in the back and Natalie was reclined beside you. You told us Natalie was your wife who died of an illness and you were so happy you were together again. She was a gorgeous brunette with large, beautiful eyes. Her hair was long and thick. I asked if we needed to get you sealed in the temple. You said, "If you want, but we're already married." I asked you how and you pointed to a ring on your finger then at God and said, "God married us. What more do we need?" Then you were back growing as a boy. You must have been in kindergarten or early elementary school and you were walking in a line at school outing. You were holding hands with the most beautiful blonde-haired girl. You said, "This is Natalie." But her name was something else on earth. You told me she was going to get sick and die and her parents would be very sad but the two of you couldn't wait to be together again with God. Then you asked Dad to give you a blessing. He did because it was his way to be there for you. It was more a Father's Blessing and it seemed it was appropriate, it was just a way to connect. It didn't seem to matter that we were LDS, just that we understood that God will work through our faith in him. We held you, I stroked your hair. It was so soft. Then, I woke up. It felt so real, bittersweet, yet wonderful to see you smile and being happy. I listened to your song "Love Yourself" on SoundCloud and it's like you had been inspired by what was to be after this life for you to write it. This is my favorite new song of yours.

What you were will not happen again...........

Eli,

It's Sunday morning and I've been up for 2 hours dragging the damn hose around the yard, giving the lawn a drink before its 100 degrees outside. I have always loved the quiet of morning and the quiet at midnight, so those are the hours I am usually the most in-tune with the world and myself.  I'm wide awake at noon on most days, but because I crave the quiet, I'm not usually in-tune at noon. This means I sleep very little, especially lately.  I bring it on myself really, for 18 years I have set my alarm to go off beginning at 5:00 AM, 5:15, 5:30, 5:45, 6:00, 6:15, 6:30, 6:45, 7:00, 7:15, and at 7:30 I finally get up.  People give me the strangest look when I tell them that, but it's how I've operated for nearly two decades and I am a little OCD and have always functioned better when i stick with a pattern. I think that might be changing.
I was in Island Park with my family 2 weeks ago and the cabin we rented put me in a loft that looked down on all of my nieces and nephews. Everything was open to the floor below and I knew i would be in trouble if I woke everyone up at the crack of dawn everyday so......I turned off my alarms and took a huge step in an attempt to maybe break out of my absurd morning routine. Again, this was huge for me, LOL.  Want to know what happened? I was wide awake each morning at 3:45, without the assistance of an alarm. When I returned from vacation, I decided to set the alarm at 6:30, 7:00 & 7:30, and I have broken a pattern for and entire week. Baby steps, right???  One other thing you should know is that I don't remember dreams.   I have heard people say that just because you don't remember a dream doesn't mean that you don't dream. The last dream I can remember was a few months after my cousin passed away, 7 years ago.  It was vivid and awesome and I remember it like it was yesterday, but I have not been able to remember a dream in 7 years.  Yesterday though, I had a 10 second dream about you that woke me up.  it was simple, no words were said....I was knocking on the door of your parents house, you opened the door, you had hair, you looked healthy and you just gave me a hug. it felt real, and you had a huge grin on your face.....that's all.
Your mom and i have had several conversations about wanting a sign from you.  I wouldn't necessarily say this dream was a sign, perhaps just a change in my sleep pattern that has finally allowed me to fall into a deep enough sleep that I can dream??? I don't know, i just don't know. but that dream was something I needed.  I laid on the couch, cuz that's where I have slept for nearly 4 months now, and i cried, an hour later I was still crying, I got up to mow the lawn and I cried some more.....(I don't know what it is about mowing the lawn but I do some of my best crying in the yard) all of the students walking to Westminster must think there is something wrong with me cuz this happens every time I mow my lawn.
I went to the rodeo in Heber City last night with a co-worker and his wife.  they had a stand out by the food vendors that had all of these different colored bandannas that each represented a different type of cancer.  Testicular cancer was orchid, but they didn't have any orchid bandannas and it made me mad.  Karl Malone was there auctioning off a new Polaris 4 wheeler to be donated to the rodeo's cancer foundation called "Buck Cancer" I personally think they should replace the B with an F, but that's just me.  someone in the crowd bought it for $17,000.  I was actually glad to see Karl Malone talking about his mother-in-law who passed away from cancer and he was just standing out there, this gigantic dude crying in front of a good 5,000 people, so it felt good to not be the only one there shedding a few tears. They paid tribute to one of the women on the Heber Rodeo committee who passed away this year from pancreatic cancer and her sons rode their horses out into the arena, took the saddles off, gave the horses a smack on the ass and the horses just ran back and forth as the sun went down.  The mountains in the background as the sun was setting were beautiful, although I could have done without the Reba McIntire song that they were playing..... i just pretended that it was Sigur Ros.  
I came across a quote by Charles Bukowski, I went to his facebook page, the dude is cynical and crass, two things I'm trying to avoid becoming, although i do love me a bit of crass. but he has some good, heavy sad stuff...this one hit me in the guts.

"When you left
you took almost everything,
I kneel in the nights
before tigers, that will not let me be.
WHAT YOU WERE WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN"

Elijah, I love you brotha.
maybe I'll see ya again soon....in a dream.

Damned Hell

Elijah, I thought by now that things would get better. They're not. I want to run away. Every weekend I feel the need to escape to the mountains. Thing is, there's no escaping the pain. I miss you so very much. I still find it hard to believe I won't see you again in this life. It seems so unreal. But every day goes by and you aren't here...only your memories. People say to be happy for the memories. Thing is, the last two years I have so many memories of you in pain, of you losing your hair and weight, of you crying in my arms. I look at pictures of you in youth and those seem so far away. High school days are great memories though. If I can go to them I can smile. But those damn cancer days...there's no escaping what pain you had to bear. And yet, because of them I got to touch you tenderly every day. I got to tell you how much I love you every day and you said it back so many times in a day. Memories of holding you in bed because you couldn't sleep. Memories of encouraging you and saying you're going to beat this. Memories of you playing your guitar and singing. Memories of our time alone in Indiana. Then come the memories of you not being able to play anymore, not being able to walk anymore, not being able to talk anymore. God I miss you. The heartache is beyond anything I could have imagined. I look at pictures of the Savior in Gethsemane and upon the cross and I now realize none of them come close to showing the agony. The pictures almost look peaceful to me now. What once moved my heart to tears doesn't touch the emotion of agony, pain, and loss I feel. No way can any man capture the pain of Mary let alone the Savior. If he felt my pain, I don't see how he could survive as a human bearing all man's sin, pain, agony, suffering. Even if he was part God, I would think those things would burst his heart well before he was nailed to a cross. I just don't understand. All we have is sanitized agony that totally leaves us unprepared for real agony.

Is this what hell is like? Everyday I walk through fog. Utah had a fire burning that filled the air with smoke. The way the air looked is how I feel inside. I forget things; I get time mixed up; and I'm so tired all the time. Not a regular "haven't had enough sleep" tired but a heavy emotional tired I've never experienced. I hope your spirit is alive somewhere. The church tells me that. I don't feel it yet. People tell me you are near and ask if I feel your nearness. I don't. I don't feel God near. When I go to church I feel such pain. It's so hard to go because people are alive, going forward with their activities and to me the world should be stopping. How can we go on? My world is stopped somehow while still going. Isn't that the definition of damned? Like water is damned and stopped from going in a direction it would like to go yet it still has currents flowing in it. That's me. I'm damned and have currents of life flowing in my veins but it's like life is stuck in my body. It's so weird, so incredibly weird.