I'm tired. Tired of forcing myself to be in this place of constant celebration. Tired of trying to pretend like it's ok that
my Dad and Laurel and the girls are no longer on this planet. Tired of missing them. It seems like lately, all I can feel is the
absolute absence of them. And I miss them all desperately.
I'm not sure I've ever felt this level of missing. When you move or don't see someone for a long time, years even, there's always this thought in your head that the possiblity of seeing them again could be pretty much whenever you both want it to happen. It's the possibility that keeps you grounded, balanced in the act of missing someone. You know they're still there, even if you don't have direct access to them. But now, now there is no access to my Dad or Laurel or the girls. They are simply gone. Yes, I have all the amazing memories. And I can still hear their voices in my head and see their facial expressions in my mind's eye when I go looking for them. But it's not the same. Because even though those memories and voices and expressions are magical and alive and gorgeous, they are stagnant. Outside of my imagination, they will never grow or age or change.
They have become absent. In every permanent meaning of the word. And the realization of that, the actual physical acceptance of that fact has begun. And it's made me very tired.
It takes an extraordinary amount of energy to hold onto possiblity. To hold onto that which is passed and past. And I have routed all of my energy over the last 10 months to that possibility, to the hope of never truly losing them.
And this really has nothing to do with the "but you'll always have them in your heart and memories" kind of thinking or the "but they're safe and free in heaven" either. Because I know I have my memories of them; I am awash with their memories daily. And I know they are free in the universe, glorious and alight with love. And does this knowledge bolster me? Sometimes, most times. But really, it's the physical absence of them in this world that is so hard for me right now. My children's memories of their Papa will fade, despite my best efforts. Elijah will move on from fishing. Nora will move on from sitting on laps to read stories. There will come a day when not every rainbow brings Laurel and the girls to mind and I won't cry every time I hear Ingrid Michaelson.
Those tangible triggers will fade. And then their absence will be complete. And when it comes right down to it, the world is a little less than for me without them in it. Struggling to make it otherwise is exhausting.
Today is Zoe's birthday. I've never known two girls who looked more forward to their birthdays than Zoe and Nora Lee. And to each other's as well. It seems wrong to not be thinking about what to get her for her birthday. To not have Nora make her a card. To not be talking birthday party planning with Laurel. To have all of that celebration be simply absent.
There have been so many "firsts" in the last three months. First holidays without them all. First birthdays gone by with them no longer here to celebrate. And with the passing of each one, it's driven it home just a little more for me. The depth of their absence from my life and the world at large. Each one has sucked just a little more wind out of me, pulled open the hole at my center just the tiniest bit more. It feels like instead of healing, this stage of acceptance has just exascerbated the wound further.
I miss them. I need them. Every day. Perhaps the real healing comes after acceptance.
It is a horrendous thing - the absence. And the missing. I have said many times since Laurel died that she was supposed to be my "getting old" friend. We had plans! We had plans to get old and we discussed many times exactly what that "getting old" would look like. What kind of 70 and 80 year old ladies we would be. How we would crochet and have cats and laugh when we took our teeth out to show each other. She simply cannot be gone, because we had plans. We had time...time to reconnect and to grow old.
ReplyDeleteI still maintain you are looking into my brain when you write...I was looking out the window of the airplane as I was flying home on Saturday thinking about Laurel and Zoe and Hannah and Lucy and how fleeting our time is on this earth. How we are simply gone one day and all we leave behind is the memory of us, which will fade and then simply disappear. I could hardly bear it. I thought I might have a full blown panic attack right there on the plane.
I wish I knew how to help relieve your pain - I wish there was a way to relieve your pain. I am at a total loss as I cannot imagine what it feels like to lose all of the people you have lost in the past year. I know you are good at seeing and finding the happy and peaceful moments when they come, so I guess all I can say is to not beat yourself up over not having those moments more often. You are allowed those dark and sad moments, too. Sometimes surrendering and riding the waves is all we can do - it is simply to hard to fight. Eventually there will be dry, solid land there to stand on, right? Hang in there and feel big hugs coming from Kansas.