Breathing in the Wreckage

-
If you want me to breathe in this wreckage, I need a place where I can fall apart. I don’t know how to do that when I’m also expected to go on, when I’m expected to keep living. I need more support than anyone could ever give. I need quiet, I need space, I need time. I need to not have to think about money, for my clients to cancel their appointments, for my children to never need anything from me. I need to never have to go anywhere, to never have errands and bills, to know for sure that I won’t lose my friends if I stop taking any interest in their lives. I need the impossible.

I need a room of my own. I need a cabin in the woods. I need to be away, away, away -- far away from this world that no longer fits, from this life that suddenly feels foreign. I need unlimited rest and sleep and quiet. I need endless opportunities to scream and sob. I need nature. I need the trees to hear all of this, to hold all of this, to be there with their steadiness and strength. I need a place where I can hear myself.

I need someone to teach me how you move forward without leaving the person you love behind. I’m trying so hard to understand how that’s possible -- and I don’t. I know I will forget things. I know my sweet Seester will feel farther and farther away. How could she not when one day it will have been decades since I’ve last spoken to her? How can I lean into this wreckage when that truth smacks me so forcefully every time? That truth is not a smoldering ache -- it is a heart-rending, all-consuming fire. Teach me how to breathe while that burns around me.

Popular posts from this blog

Stories

-
You write not just any story, but this story. The words you form are not just any words, they grow out of the reality of death. What is the story of the story you're in? The story I’m in feels like just that - a story. It feels as though there must have been some big mistake, a giant cosmic error. There must be some misunderstanding. This must be someone else’s life. I’m ready to file a grievance with the Universe. It must have been under the impression that I could live without her. Can you see now what you’ve done, ripping her away from me? How exactly did you think this would go? Parts of my brain keep telling me that the story is real. You were there, Jenn - remember? Remember crawling into bed next to her as she lay dying, remember feeling your heart break when they carried her body away? Remember picking out the box for her ashes, writing her obituary, delivering her eulogy? Remember that you can’t text her now, that you can’t hug her anymore, that she wasn’t there for Chri...
Read more

Grief's Voice

-
I am grief. I am small, scared, tucked away. Not small in feelings, but small because I feel powerless, because I’m so scared of what I might lose. I’m a small animal - like a hedgehog, vulnerable but prickly. I’m in hibernation, curled up into a sphere, my body wound tightly like the shell of a snail. I am terrified to move. I hide away, clinging to these precious bits of her fiercely. The world no longer feels safe anymore. I gather all my comforts around me, pulling in leaves and down and fur and bits of grass, hoping they will protect me. Knowing that they can’t. Knowing that I can’t stay here forever. I’m afraid to breathe. Afraid that every bit of movement or change means that something will be lost. If I stay here forever, can I keep her forever? If I stay here forever, can she stay here with me? I can’t endure the noise of the outside world, the light that seeps through the cracks. It is too much. It is a place I don’t belong, a place that will never feel right. I don’t know ho...
Read more

The Changed World

-
You can’t come into my world; you haven’t paid the price of entry. You aren’t permitted to step inside. You can’t know how to join me here. I wander, dazed and confused, heartbroken and angry, trying to figure out what I am supposed to do next, in what direction I am supposed to be headed. In this world, there is no peace. In this world, there is no rest. I live in this world by stumbling through it. By retreating from it. By denying that it exists. By screaming and crying and thrusting my rage upon it. I know where I live. I live in the place where she was - though it is not the same. It is a world where something will always be missing. Without her here, the light has left. Without her, things that were once familiar are now unknown. This world feels like a movie set - it looks the same, but it’s all pretend. It has no heartbeat, no life, no rhythm. It is nothing more than an illusion. I live in this world by putting on a costume and pretending it’s a “normal” day - for those times w...
Read more