A Sense of Loss

Today was not supposed to finish this way.  It was a regular, goofy Friday until a few hours ago.

Blackbeard's mother is in critical condition right now.  She has been in a coma all week.  Things took a turn.  Forms have been signed.  It's not over but it isn't looking good.  I just got off the phone with him.  I can tell by his voice how things are.  I don't even have to imagine how he's feeling because he sounds exactly like I did in early December of 2007.  Suddenly Dead Mothers are unfortunately familiar territory.

Cindy Brady is on her way home from Art School for the last time.  She's moving in with him.  Tonight.  She is driving dark 95 through Carolina right now blasting ASG through her speakers.  She needs to feel all the happy she can feel before she gets here and the sadness drowns it out.  Because the triumph of her graduation is being tempered by a graduation of another kind, most likely very soon.

The saddest part of death isn't the dying.  The saddest part is the emptiness for those left behind.  The dead are at peace.  It is we who rage and roil like burdened clouds in a storm.  Feelings of loss and grief and anger at the unknown.  Fearful that losing a link in the chain of our lives brings us ever closer to our own breaking.

And maybe it does.  Maybe we are all towers of Jenga and pieces get pulled til we topple.

Or maybe we are tires gone flat until some new passion breathes us back into purpose.  Two weeks after my mother died, it felt like this to me:

My path still is, and may always be under construction, but right now it seems to be closed to traffic. Imagine a road after an earthquake with downed trees hanging on exposed power lines; buckled sections of asphalt littered with buildings one false step away from collapse. No sudden movements.

Now it’s all completely torn up, full of potholes and pitfalls and utterly undrivable. The only way to navigate this would be with a cautiously alert tiptoe movement. Perhaps in the future I’ll be able to set cones up and allow travel on the safe parts…just not right now.

I stumbled around in that wreckage for one solid year before taking a true, deep breath.  And another half year after that before even trying to be a part of the world.  I stumbled and fell flat on my face in so many different ways during that time.  The one thing constant was the people who know me and love me anyway.  They kept me moving whether I fell down or not.  They were my someplace to land.

And I will continue to be one of those people for Blackbeard however this comes out.  He's family to me and I just love that kid.
Whatever else you do in your life - love comes first.