Sorry for Maxie

I am so sorry for myself.  I am so sorry for Ted.  I am sorry for our parents and our friends and the daycare where Maxie went.  Most of all though, I am SO sorry for Maxie.  I am so sorry that he only had nine months to be in this beautiful world, with parents and grandparents who adored him.  I am so sorry for him that he had to go through this.  That he woke up in the morning on the 19th of July and had no idea that by 10:30 am, he would be in an Emergency Room with a heartbeat but no brain function.  I love him so much - I wanted to protect him from all that was evil in this world.  I wanted only happy and good for him.  I feared bullying, and accidents, and the heartbreak that come with life.  I was scared of his eventual drivers license and trips without us.  I was scared about how he would one day handle pear pressure and rejection.  At the end of the day though, I saw a bright and beautiful future for Maxie. I saw friends, school days, summer camp, soccer games, holidays, birthdays, dating, college, love, marriage, children of his own.  I woke up every morning feeling so blessed and excited to be a part of all of it.  What a wonderful thing to be a parent!
I am in a kind of earthly purgatory.  I do not want to be alive anymore but I don't want to die either.  When people ask how I am doing, I often answer that I am just breathing from one day to the next.  I am literally breathing, hoping that the days end will come soon, so I can be done with it. Each day is a complete eternity. Each morning is a punch in the gut.  I am back at work, but working from home.  I love my job and find our mission incredibly meaningful, but the day to day tasks of a job seem incredibly meaningless in the big picture right now.  I am doing the best I can.  I am struck every single morning by the fact that Max is not here anymore and it takes my breath away.  My life feels without meaning at all.  But, here I am again, feeling sorry for myself.
Max was my everything.  My whole life revolved around him and I feel bitter and cheated now about every minute that I was not with him.  He was lucky to have had so many people who loved him but how can I ever say Max was lucky?  Max got a raw deal!  Max was cheated from a beautiful and full life.  Max was given so many outstanding qualities - he was cute and smart and personable and easy and sociable - for what?!!!!!  So he could die?  My heart hurts so much for him.  We are all supposed to go on with life like this didn't happen and I try at times but I am pulled back completely in an instant to the horror of it all.  Of losing my boy, my most precious person.
I keep thinking about this party on a rooftop in downtown LA that I went to in my 20s.  We had a friend who lived in an old hotel, in the penthouse apartment, with a few other people and giant pig for a pet.  They used to throw crazy parties and we would all end up on the roof.  At one of those parties, a guy fell off the roof and died.  The party went on for about an hour as the rumor spread that a guy had fallen off the roof.  It was hard to tell if it was real or just a  made up prank.  Sure enough, the cops showed up and they told everyone not to leave.  They wanted to talk to as many people as they could for their investigation.  So, everyone stayed and kept on drinking and hanging out.  It was like the same party we were at before the guy died.  None of my friends or friends of friends knew the guy and we all were horrified, but still at this party and not allowed to leave.  Certainly, the mood became more subdued, but people were still drinking and playing with the pig and flirting and gossiping.  There was a small crowd of the guy's friends who were still on the roof (the rest of us had come inside) and I could see that they were panicked and hysterical.  Most specifically, the dead man's girlfriend, was completely beside herself.  She could not be consoled.  For months afterward, I was haunted by the thought of the guy and the his girlfriend.  They got ready to go out that night, thinking it would be a great party, never having the slightest clue that it would be for him, his last night on earth and for her, the worst night of her life.  It horrified me that the rest of us just kept going on, business as usual, while she was experiencing the most terrible tragedy I could ever imagine at that time.
Today is the month anniversary of Max's "incident".  The day he stopped breathing.  The worst day of my life.  I would give my own life for Max to come back and be able to live his own.  I loved Max more than anything in the world.  I cannot go on like nothing happened.  My life is not business as usual. I am not one of the party goers on the inside of the penthouse.  I AM ON THE ROOF!  I am the mommy!  I am Max's mommy and my life will never be the same again.  Today, I am in hell.  Tomorrow, if I am lucky, I might be back in purgatory.