Dear Ben,

 I was taught so many things while I was growing up. To be quiet in the library, how to look both ways before I cross the street. I have learned how to be polite to people and how to survive during financial hardships. I never learned the thing I needed the most to make my way thru my life-- how to keep breathing while my heart is breaking. No one ever taught me how I am to continue on when one of my children is no longer here with me. They only tell me life will get easier as the years pass. Are they thinking I will forget about you--or that at some point I will adjust, and after so much time with you not here, it will just become "normal" for me. I don't like this feeling. I have not become used to this life and it has been over 6 years. I miss you today even more than I did a week after you passed. Sometimes when I am sitting in the living room and I look at the wall with all the family pictures, I see yours and think--"Oh I need to call Ben..". Then I remember, I can't. It is while looking at your picture that it feels as if you are still here, but then reality sinks in and I remember your not here.

Life feels so over whelming and hard.  It is a day to day struggle to accept the fact that you are gone and I cannot talk with you, hug you, hear you laugh or hear the words " I love you mom".

Why is the acceptance and finality of your death so hard for me? Why do I still wake in the night thinking in my mind that it can't be true, your not really gone, it was just a bad dream..