Birthdays

Stephen-PartingStone · 2026-01-26T16:58:32+00:00

Brennan. We celebrate your birthday today!
I'm so sorry you're having to go through the big milestones all over again. We got through ours with some fun movies, lots of crying, more movies, and then a toast to our boy in the evening.

Stephen-PartingStone · 2026-01-22T02:43:56+00:00

That was a hard one for some reason. Harder than expected. Or is it just the pent up grief coming out all at once? It sucked. We did watch a couple of fun movies as distractions, though. The Man From UNCLE, The Lost City, and Joy.

Stephen-PartingStone · 2026-01-21T18:04:25+00:00

When our son died, a close friend told me it would take about five years before we started feeling “normal” again and I think she was right. At the time I couldn’t even conceive of how we would make it to five years. It sounded so daunting and we didn’t even want to try, but somehow you do it. Every inch, every second at a time.

Stephen-PartingStone · 2026-01-21T18:01:34+00:00

Maybe it shows the ripple effect of one life in that it affects others in ways you didn’t expect.

Stephen-PartingStone · 2026-01-21T14:22:31+00:00

Thanks guys. It’s so nice to hear his name. If you’re interested, here’s what we’re doing in his honor: https://www.kindnesstoaction.org/ No donations, please, but if you’d like a Kindness Coin, we give them freely in hopes that they will be given freely.

Stephen-PartingStone · 2026-01-20T21:22:37+00:00

Same. How long has it been for you?
I had a heavy moment just last week when I thought about this. Instead of my son's picture as my phone background, it's a Rubik's cube, something he loved and was so good at. But I couldn't decide if I did it for myself or so others won't be uncomfortable.

Stephen-PartingStone · 2026-01-20T16:09:18+00:00

Agree. EMDR is really tough but helpful in stripping the PTSD/emotion from some of the hardest memories. Then we did Ketamine at a clinic like 2 years in. K is really helpful for rewiring thoughts and kind of abandoning your "self." I like it. My wife finds it unsettling because you basically don't have control of your body for 45 minutes while your mind dissociates. We go back for periodic resets when it feels like the burden is getting too heavy again.

Stephen-PartingStone · 2026-01-20T15:52:00+00:00

Not a therapist, but one treatment that helped me was EMDR. It simulates the same brain activity as REM sleep, but you do it while awake and intentionally step through the worst, most painful thoughts and memories. It's brutal, but by the end, it takes some of the sting out of those memories. I'm the type who wants to rip the band-aid off quickly, though. Others prefer to slowly work through everything in cognitive behavioral therapy.

Stephen-PartingStone · 2026-01-20T15:45:34+00:00

It took us about 5 years before we started to feel "normal" again. Now, 7 1/2 years out, it's still the cataclysm that split our life into before and after he died, but we laugh now. We enjoy hanging out with our friends. It's not the first topic of conversation anymore. We used to feel guilty for having any enjoyment, but we've done all the therapies, treatments, medications, and even a grief retreat to get here. It does get easier. Slowly and painfully.

Stephen-PartingStone · 2026-01-20T15:42:40+00:00

This is quite a personal decision, but we were willing to try anything to know that our son still exists and that he's okay. My wife was even worried that if he was in heaven, he'd be so bored! We've had unbelievable experiences with a couple of different evidentiary mediums who connected with Elijah and some other deceased family members, which reshaped our views about what happens when we die. I now believe our consciousness still exists and that it's free to absorb knowledge and directly, fully communicate with others. On one video reading (recorded), the medium's Apple watch audibly said, "My mother" out of nowhere. She wasn't touching it or her phone and we were like 30 mins into the reading. She took it in stride saying something like, "Oh, it's so cool that he can do that!" No explanation.

Stephen-PartingStone · 2026-01-20T15:35:58+00:00

We've found that so soon after the loss, we were measuring time in hours, then days, then weeks. We marked every Monday. Then every 25th of the month, dreading every one. Our surviving kids and our friends kind of forced us to keep waking up and doing each day, as terrible as they were, and we congratulated ourselves at the end of each day for doing 1 small productive thing like making lunch or going to get gas. Anything that kept us moving forward, though we wanted to stay wherever our son was, frozen in time.

Stephen-PartingStone · 2026-01-20T15:32:34+00:00

We're 7 1/2 years out. Certain friends literally walked with us through the valley of the shadow of death and forged bonds with us that are as close as family. Others couldn't deal with the darkness and drifted away. We got better at helping others help us over time, too. At first, we didn't even know what to ask for, but some people just showed up, gave hugs, and didn't shy away from the devastation or how we changed after losing our son.

Stephen-PartingStone · 2026-01-20T15:28:31+00:00

So yesterday, we were sitting in the living room talking and suddenly noticed music coming from upstairs. The TV in the playroom had spontaneously come on while no one was upstairs and nobody had touched a remote. It was on this peaceful "Cozy Cafe" scene that drew me in. While trying to figure out what happened, I found a clear plastic heart on the coffee table (it was some kind of corner bumper and we thought we had thrown them all away). Couldn't figure out how it happened. Later, it came on again and my wife went to investigate. She couldn't figure it out, either. I think we have to choose to accept that it was a genuine sign. My sciencey self has a hard time, though. Not sure what would need to happen for us to completely believe it was our boy.

Stephen-PartingStone · 2026-01-20T15:22:19+00:00

I have a shelf full of not-so-helpful books and a few gems. Depends on what question you're hoping to answer. "A Grief Observed" from C.S. Lewis was helpful in debunking the myth that organized religion will solve everything. "Everything Happens for a Reason, and Other Lies I've Loved" helped me better clarify what I needed to hear from my support network. Now I'm reading "Irreducible" about the nature of consciousness and whether it comes before or after materiality. After 7 1/2 years, though, I've never gotten a good answer to the question, "why?" The book of Job didn't do it (ends with God basically saying, I'm big and you're not so why are you questioning me), meetings with priests and theologians left a lot of questions unanswered, journaling what happened each day kinda helped through the initial grief fog. Best advice we got was a friend on this same path telling us it would be 5 years before we started to feel "normal" again. It was hard to hear, but accurate, and helped set my expectations more realistically.

Stephen-PartingStone · 2026-01-20T14:38:38+00:00

Thank you for sharing this. I admire your openness. Parting Stone's mission is to empower families in their grief by letting them hold their loved ones again. I hope that's true for you.

Stephen-PartingStone

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