A raw nerve exposed - Grief and Loss observed

The most frightening thing about losing my son is the waves of grief and how they affect everyone who lost him. Marcus Aurelius tells us that grief and anger can be worse than the things that caused the grief and anger, but it seems impossible to control.  The very fabric of my reality has been torn open and will be forever changed. I don't seem to have much control over this change, but I am trying to be a good person through it. I am a vastly different person than I was on July 8th. This is a forest fire raging through the core of me. It's self-hatred and regret and pain scouring any kind of soft ideas inside of me  Only the mighty oaks and great mountains of what I know to be true remain.  I don't know if I'm going to continue in medicine. I want to. But how am I going to save lives when my own son needed help and I couldn't reach him in time?  I'm working with well meaning grief counselors and therapists. If I must change, then I want to direct how I will ch...

“When the longest- and shortest-lived of us dies their loss is precisely equal. For the sole thing of which any of us can be deprived is the present, since this is all we own, and nobody can lose what is not theirs.” ―  Marcus Aurelius,  Meditations

Mourning is a long process of working through grief. It is NOT expected of you to suffer every second.  This loss is a new and permanent part of your life and it imposes itself, spreading wave after wave into every aspect of your existence. It is an unwelcome adjustment forced upon you by circumstances you could not control. Eventually it will be a permanent part of your life in one way or another, but this unwanted labor that demands your attention is not the master of your life and emotions.  It might seem impossible to think of at first, but it is healthy to temporarily give yourself permission to enter a headspace where you choose to have no opinions on anything outside of it. This headspace is your grief bubble. A temporary self imposed exile from the unthinkable situation at hand. It seems impossible at first. How could you just "decide" to not care about this monumental loss.  But as a human being, you have a remarkable ability to decide what is important at any mo...

Link to imgur post:  https://imgur.com/gallery/88taK1e He was one of my favorite people on the planet. He was creative, sweet, and he really cared about other people. He was such a good big brother, and always looked out for the younger kids. He was brilliant at programming rhythm and beats. I always liked when he would ninja sample me practicing guitar, like around the corner without me knowing,  and then make a little song out of it.  He really loved all kinds of music.  He also used to draw these massive cityscapes in perfect 3 point perspective and make up whole stories about the people in them. He would just add an 8 1/2 x 11 page with scotch tape when he needed to add space to his scene. And he had always talked about being a civil engineer and solving problems with traffic and all that. He was just a brilliant mind, and I still love him so much.  But he also suffered from severe bipolar disorder. As he grew up with me, I made the decision that, since I ha...

I meet people all the time deeply experiencing grief. I thought that being around it so much would have prepared me. But, nothing could have prepared me for how awful this is. There's just not supposed to be a world where I'm alive and he's not. Fathers aren't supposed to bury their children. I haven't lived in a world without him since I was his age. This world does not make sense without his smile and warmth in it. There was no words for the deep and complex love I had,  and still have, for him and the grief of his loss is just as profound. I just have to feel that wherever he is now, he's at peace and knows that dad will always love him. People say this passes but I don't feel like it ever will. I just want it to be not true. I would give anything for it to not be real. I love him so much.

Our son, Aben, passed away on July 9th. I love him more than words could ever say. And my heart is broken in a way that feels like it will never recover. He was a soldier in the 82nd Airborne and was thrilled to be on a new adventure in life with his beautiful wife Ashley by his side. Arrangements are being made to bring him home to southern California so he can be close to all the people he loved as he grew up. At his core, he was a sweet, gentle young man that loved to make everybody smile, and I am grateful that the last time I saw him, I gave him a hug and a big kiss on the cheek and told him how proud I was of him and that I loved him before he drove off to North Carolina. Service Announcements will be made next week. Goodnight, my sweet boy, rest in peace. Aben Piers Hahn, 2000 - 2020

I think that sharing what I've been going through these past couple weeks could benefit someone who has lost a child. I'm still going through it. There is no adequate description of the emptiness and wrongness that boils unanswered inside of you.  Everyone sends their condolences and says they can't imagine how it feels. They are correct. The words you are reading started out as me trying to write something that would be appropriate to say at my son's funeral, but there's just too much. It would last hours and this is a summer funeral amidst peak coronavirus. So it will go here.  My son has died. My life is completely different. And if you're in this horrible place with me, I'm so sorry. If you're trusting me by reading my words, and I cannot give you comfort; then I hope that I am at least able to give you a direction where you can see hope, and every day is not a waking nightmare.