Four Months and Counting

I woke up this morning and for the first time since her death, I wasn’t filled with an overwhelming sense of loss.  The other night I had a dream that I was praying and she was all better.  Then I woke up and realized it was just a dream.  I had seen her in my dreams as if she was real but in the cold light of day, she was still dead.  Dead.  How final is that word.  This morning when I woke up, I felt a sense of hope.  I thought maybe this is where I start to finally heal, to move forward with my life. 

Now I sit before this blank screen, spewing words at it, in the hope that somehow I can make sense of my life.  

I spent the afternoon with my brother and my son.  I wanted to reach out to him.  I wanted to ask him how he was.  I wanted to have a real conversation with him.  In the end, I just settled for occupying the same space as him.  In the movie theater, I held my son in my arms during the scary bits and I realized the chasm between us (my brother and me) has grown deeper, wider, since my mother’s passing.  

I have felt in the not too distant past that my brother and father were somehow growing distant from me.  I didn’t travel halfway across the world to bury my mother.  I did feel excluded and abandoned.  Today I realized that we are so broken without her that being in each others company is painful.  It’s a reminder of what we shared and what we lost.  

A part of our soul was ripped away when she died.  Love was ripped from our hearts and buried thousands of miles across an ocean and two continents away.  I don’t know if we will ever find our way back to each other and be a family again.  Not like we used to be.  Inside me tonight is just numbness.  As this wretched year slowly draws to a close, I find myself staring into a hopeless abyss.  

Perhaps I’m being dramatic.  I have hope.  I have two little boys who love me and despite what I may often feel, still require my love.  They keep me alive and moving forward when I can barely find the will to move.  Every day that passes, I see the baby slowly pull my dad forward, a millimeter at a time.  Will healing ever come?

Being alone with each other hurts far too much.  I miss you so much mother.  I don’t know if I can stand this pain for whatever remains of my life.  I didn’t know pain like this existed.  I never knew that tears could flow so freely against my will.  I didn’t know I would ever live without you.  It’s been nearly six months since my cousin said you would die.  And you died.  Yet, I still find it hard to fathom how you can be gone.  

I am tempted to echo your grandson’s cry, “Mommy come back!”  God please make this pain stop.  Or yet, give me strength to withstand this storm that’s raging.  Even my words can’t comfort me now.