End to a means means the end

When I started this, my intent was to be honest, with myself and with my readers.  I’m afraid I haven’t been honest.  I realized that tomorrow morning at 4:15 am it will be a month since my mom has been gone.  My life has been turned upside down for nearly a month now.  I am far enough away to try to be honest about the pain which has started to ease into a dull ache.  

I don’t know what you’re going through but I do understand your pain.  I share it.  The loss of a parent is never easy.  Having faith will help sustain you in the long run but it doesn’t save you from the pain that consumes you.  I’ve learned that is a process you just have to endure.  

I know that when she died, I thought of heaven a lot.  I wanted to be there, where she was.  I thought of how heaven is supposed to be a place where there is no more pain or sorry and I longed to be there with an intensity that was nearly obsessive.  I thought about it a lot.  

I didn’t realize at the time how much I really wanted to go where she was, escape the pain that filled me.

Last night I spoke to my dad.  He’ll be returning home at last.  I don’t know what that will be like for him to come back to her house.  My brother still doesn’t talk to me.  It’s almost as if they resent me living here.  But then, I have spent a month surrounded by her things mostly grieving.  Maybe they need the same thing, time to get used to breathing without her.

My other half said I could have gone to lay her to rest.  I can honestly admit that I didn’t want to do that, put her body in the ground.  While they were laying her to rest, I was living here, amongst her things and mourning, dying a little inside every second of the day.  But I’ve had the time to work through my pain; I had no choice, life kept moving on despite my best efforts to make it stop.

This is me, admitting that after they left, I went to a place I hadn’t expected to go.  I never really admitted this and I am doing so now because I need to be honest with myself.  Maybe it’s a part of the grieving process and but I thought of heaven entirely too much.  I longed to go there just so the pain would stop.  It hasn’t stopped and I sometimes wonder if it ever will.  

Robin William’s death made me realize that I needed to stop thinking about heaven.  I felt alone.  I still do.  When I am surrounded by my sons and their father, I feel less alone.  But mostly, I just feel alone.  I want to be in a place where I remember what it feels like to be happy again.  I don’t think I would recognize it if I encountered it.  

If you think I thought about it, I did.  But in the end, my mother’s voice admonishing me for not thinking of my sons stopped me.  So I stopped thinking about heaven.  I made myself stop.  But there are moments, when the pain is so intense, the grief and loneliness so overwhelming that I start thinking about it again.  I miss her.  She’s in a place where pain, sickness, and sorrow can’t touch her.  I think I want to go there still but the strings tied to my heart holds me back, makes me hesitate.  So for the moment, I am safe from my thoughts.  

Forgive me, but I wasn’t as strong as I would like to have been.  I have lost my footing and I can’t seem to find it.  I am hanging from the edge of the cliff and there is no one there to save me.  This is about as honest I can bring myself to be at this time.  Maybe when I’m farther away from that moment still I can actually admit the truth, even to myself.