Haunting Thoughts

Once in a while I will wake up with one of a few haunting thoughts.  They are not necessarily because of any dream that I may have the night before but just an intuitive thought that I may have to prepare myself for something big that day.  The most prominant one is that it will be the day that RP gets hurt.  Not a scary life threatening hurt, but the random broken bone or wiping out and having to get stitches.  He has only had stitches one time when he flipped his tricycle at the age of three.  He split his chin on a Sunday evening so we had to go to Urgent Care.  The thought it just one that makes me think of what action I would take in the event that my intuition played out.  It hasn't, which is great, but that thoughts creeps into my brain every now and then. 

The second most prominent is that RP's dad will contact me or we will see him out in the world.  Again, it hasn't happened in three years, but it feels like that time could be due.   I think of what I would say to him on the phone.  How I would react, if I would yell at him immediately letting out nearly 7 years of aggression towards him or if I listen to what he had to say.  The thought of seeing him in public is one that i can not fathom.  I have no idea what I would do.  I think that I would stand stunned and frozen which is not a great tactic of protecting my son from any more pain.

Recently, though, my haunting thoughts will become reality soon.  mr's grandfather is walking the path towards death soon.  He has been moved from a hospital to hospice, and now, to a nursing home.  There is no more will to live and he wants to let go of this life.  I know that it will happen but I don't know how to help mr.  This will be the first close family member that mr will lose.  He is 30 and has all four of his grandparents.  I never believed that people could live that long with out losing one!  I lost my paternal great grandmother when I was around 5 or 6.  I don't remember her very well, but I remember the fear of seeing a dead body in a casket.  I lost my maternal grandfather when I was turning 10.  His death was profound for me.  He has been sick for sometime but I never truly knew that meant that he was close to death.  My great grandmother passed when I was 12.  She was very old and was living at a nursing home.  I remember that my parents had already seperated before her death, but they never told her because they knew she would worry.  The most recent was my maternal grandmother.  I was 22 when she passed.  It was the most difficult loss to bear.  I was not ready for her to go.

So here I am on the other side of death.  I am not a family member but his death will affect me because I am mr's support......and that is the haunting thought.  I don't know how to support him.  I don't know what to say to him.  I have spewed off my knowledge of funerals and my own coping mechanism and what we did as a family during our times of loss.  But his family and mine are so very different that my words have been of no comfort and they have even come out in a more cold way than I had ever intended.  My family talks and talks and talks and talks.  His family does not.  I was upset when he wouldn't talk to me about what he was feeling about his grandfather one day.  I was mad and cold towards him.  I should have been just standing with open arms.  I know that when people are upset that letting them open up is  important in their healing process and their own coping.  But I pushed because he was not acting the only way that people have acted in my experience with death.  I don't know that I will be a good support for him.  I am worried that I will push him to grieve the way that I grieved.  I should be better at this.  I have never been on this side, and it is very difficult because I do not want to fail him.  I do not want him to be in pain without support from me and I know he won't but I don't know that I will be what he needs.  I can't imagine how he is feeling right now but at the exact same time, I know exactly how he is feeling right now.  I don't want him to have this experience.  I don't want him to know what it is like to bury someone you love.  I want to protect him from this just as I want to protect RP from the pain of family death.