Some nights I just lie here in my bed and cry. I cry for hours. I want my baby. So many thoughts creep into my mind and I cannot escape them. I have no doubt I am dealing with some form of PTSD.
The memories of Payton’s final moments completely destroy my heart and soul. Leaving the room to talk with the hospice nurses will forever be embedded in the “guilt” section of my mind/heart. I will never be able to forget Aunt Karen coming to get us. I thought Payton was asking for me (as he did every time I left the room, if only for a minute). Walking back in this room, seeing my baby struggling to breathe, and hearing the sound of the “death rattle” coming from my sweet 7 year old little boy, is something that rarely leaves my mind. I think to myself “We weren’t with him in his final moments of consciousness”. I can’t help but feel he did not know we were there with him. That’s not how it was supposed to be. None of this is how it was supposed to be. I hate myself for leaving the room. I should have been there.
Then I think about his last days in the hospital and how he cried, tears and all, because he wanted to go home so bad. We should have brought him home sooner. Nothing they were doing was helping him anyways. We wasted the last days of his precious life in the hospital when we could have been home with him, snuggling, watching Blue’s Clues, and reading Magic Tree House books. I am glad we brought him home when we did…a day later and he would have passed away at the hospital and I don’t know if I could deal with that at all. In my bed is where I feel him most. He was my little snuggle bug. I miss him, I know I say that a lot, but I just miss him so much and there are no words to capture this kind of “missing” your child.
Payton loved taking “selfies”
Payton Strong 