I have been so overwhelmed with grief this past week that I have been frightened of sitting down to pour out all the emotions I am drowning in. I am not frightened of the emotions themselves, but rather of my physical reaction in looking at them straight on. I am so deluged with emotions and the astonishing power behind them that I am firmly rooted in this place – trying to determine which is worse; yielding to them, or continuing to squash them down until I finally suffocate.
Sorrow appears to be the emotion I feel most often. Sometimes I think I understand it and other times I can only shake my head in confusion.
I realize that losing someone you love is devastating, but the shadows that follow you around and blanket your heart forever after can be equally, if not worse. Occasionally we are forewarned – by illness or age – and see the loss coming. Other times it comes at us like a stealth fighter jet and we haven’t the opportunity to react and get the hell out of the way before it decimates us. The infinite questions that follow that type of annihilation will forever remain unanswered.
Even now, 13 years after Alexander’s birth and death, I think about all of the “would-a, could-a, should-as”. The “if only-s” drive me crazy, too.
Somebody told me once that I am living my present life too much in my past. For awhile, that bothered me because I didn’t understand what that meant. (I still don’t, really.) Then I realized that if feeling emotions infinitely deeper than some people means I’m living too much in my past, then there is very little I can do. I am an intensely passionate person and when I love someone, it is with every iota of my being. Oddly enough, I don’t wear my ardor on the outside of my body so it is very often missed – or misread.
The day Alexander was born was an extraordinarily beautiful fall day. The sky was an exceptionally intense blue. The sun was high and not a cloud stood in its way. The fall colors came early that year, too, so the road home from where my son lay was surrounded by multicolored foliage. Even now it doesn’t make sense to me how I endured the worst loss of my life that day, but the world continued to turn.
Please, stop the world and let me step off…I surrender...
Sorrow appears to be the emotion I feel most often. Sometimes I think I understand it and other times I can only shake my head in confusion.
I realize that losing someone you love is devastating, but the shadows that follow you around and blanket your heart forever after can be equally, if not worse. Occasionally we are forewarned – by illness or age – and see the loss coming. Other times it comes at us like a stealth fighter jet and we haven’t the opportunity to react and get the hell out of the way before it decimates us. The infinite questions that follow that type of annihilation will forever remain unanswered.
Even now, 13 years after Alexander’s birth and death, I think about all of the “would-a, could-a, should-as”. The “if only-s” drive me crazy, too.
Somebody told me once that I am living my present life too much in my past. For awhile, that bothered me because I didn’t understand what that meant. (I still don’t, really.) Then I realized that if feeling emotions infinitely deeper than some people means I’m living too much in my past, then there is very little I can do. I am an intensely passionate person and when I love someone, it is with every iota of my being. Oddly enough, I don’t wear my ardor on the outside of my body so it is very often missed – or misread.
The day Alexander was born was an extraordinarily beautiful fall day. The sky was an exceptionally intense blue. The sun was high and not a cloud stood in its way. The fall colors came early that year, too, so the road home from where my son lay was surrounded by multicolored foliage. Even now it doesn’t make sense to me how I endured the worst loss of my life that day, but the world continued to turn.
Please, stop the world and let me step off…I surrender...
No comments:
Post a Comment