Can it be possible to really be alive without you?

That's what I was thinking when I woke up this mornng.  Last night we went to the Provo Rooftop Concert Series.  You'd be disappointed to know that this is the last year they're doing it.  I imagined how happy you would have been to be there last night. Desert Noises and Joshua James performed.  You'd have run around helping them.  Heck you may have performed with them by now.  Listening made me realize how silent our house has gone without your background music.  It sucks Elijah.  I miss you so much.  I miss that smile of yours.  It was the happiest smile. It was the cutest smile.  It seems surreal to be alive, to have been your mother, to have known you from your first breath to your last.  How is that possible?  I watched an entire life come and go.  And yet here I am, still alive.  Barely wanting to be here.  My soul kind of just died when you did.  It is so hard to go on every day.  I love your brothers and do so so that they don't have to lose another family member, but it is hard.  It is so hard.  My soul has died.  My heart has hardened a bit.  My joy is never full.  I always have an ache.  I love you Elijah.  I miss you Elijah.  Life isn't the same.  Life will never be the same.  It will never be full again. How am I even living?  I don't understand any of this.  I don't understand anything at all.

Why?

Sometimes I think my heart will just shatter.  It physically hurts.  I don't understand why it doesn't.  Why do I still live when you so wanted to and now I just don't care?  None of this makes any sense to me at all.  Why does my heart keep beating?  My brother called this week.  There was an article in the paper where he lives by a woman he knows whose son was killed by a sniper in Afghanistan.  He was only 22.  That was 15 years ago.  She said time doesn't heal wounds; what you do with your time heals wounds.  She has organized efforts to help veterans.  It has made the difference in her life.  Maybe because I was raised Mormon and spent all of my life up to your sickness serving in the church, maybe that's why I feel too tired to go out and serve....to reach out and make someone else's life better.  I don't know......It's been suggested to think of how you will feel when we meet again if there's an afterlife, how will you feel about how I've lived since you've passed.....I'm just not as good as you Elijah.  You gave living everything you had.  I'm living with the results that it didn't matter that you gave it all.  Life just got sucked out of you.  Yes, you left everyone feeling loved.  Yes, your music touches hearts to this day.  But me, right now I'm just a mass of flesh with a gaping wound that wonders how it's possible that my heart doesn't shatter because it physically hurts so much.  And time.....three fucking years and no energy to give a shit.

Imprisioned

Watching General Conference.  Feeling imprisioned by priviledged white male patriarchy.  Wondering what you would think about the recent "revelations" from President Nelson.  Wish so much you could show yourself to me and let me know that all of this matters.  Trying to understand this world.  Did we just happen through probability of evolution?  Do I have a soul?  Will it go on?  Will I ever know or do I just have to exist and have "faith"?  Why does God withhold so much when it hurts so much and people hurt each other through his teachings?  Has he even given us any teachings or are they those of priviledged white patriarchy?  I feel so imprisioned and wish that you could save me from this broken heart and spirit by letting me know.

Lost

Elijah so much has changed since you left us.  We've lost faith.  We've lost God.  We've lost so much.  You wrote that you love the Forgotten Souls of this world.  Do you love us?  Can you find us?  Can you help us or is it all just this for the rest of my life?  Will you find this forgotten soul? Did we just build our faith up to have it burn down?  Did chemicals erase you all?  Are we just chemicals?  How can that be?  And yet, I hear you not, I see you not, I know not where you are, I know not where you went I'm lost, a puddle of tears flowing where I know not.  I've held to you.  Your words in your songs are what I hold to hoping you had some wisdom of which you knew not.  I wish you could come hold me, that  I could touch your soft head once more.  I've lost so much.  I hold on to the hope that I will see you again.  Maybe not in this mortal state, but I will hold on to that hope forever because the thought that 23 years was all is not a thought my heart can hold.  Thank you for your music, for your love, for your being.  Without those I'm lost in a labyrinth and downward spiral.