It’s Sinking In

He is gone and I am feeling it.

I put up my defenses right away, “I don’t want anyone to tell me they are sorry” I said. I thought it was because it wouldn’t do any good. I wouldn’t know how  to respond… I know? I’m sorry too?

But now I’m wondering if it was a way to avoid feeling the sadness. Avoid spending time with it, understanding it and ultimately letting it go.

“What’s the big deal, anyway?” I thought. He hadn’t been born and I knew the odds were not on my side. “I shouldn’t have even gotten my hopes up”, “I should’ve known this would happen”. That’s what’s been playing on a loop in my head.

Yesterday I had my writing class. The last group of people I told I was expecting and now the last group I’d have to tell “I lost him”.

It went ok. It started out ok. And then, the prompt. To write a letter to someone. Anyone. A part of ourselves even. I started a letter to my guilt. The growing guilt I had over “should haves” and “if only”. The guilt that would not bring Noah back and more importantly, wouldn’t bring me back.

The tears started and grew with each unwritten sentence. I sat there, pen poised above paper and let the tidal waves rage. (Thankfully there were a couple of other people who had allergies, so that helped make it seem like my crying wasn’t such a big deal).

Then I forced myself to write. Dear guilt, you may have been invited but now you are being asked to leave. You are not helping. I need to grieve and you are only impeding that effort. I don’t like you anyway and I don’t want you hanging around just in case, in moment of weakness, I call out your name. Noah is gone, for whatever reason. He was meant to be here and I believe, he did what he came to do. Even if I don’t understand it, I accept it. I signed my goodbye and forgot about it until now.

 

The rest of class went well and I received lots of love, hugs and support. I even repressed the urge to shut people down, letting them express their sorrow for my loss. I took in their kind words and the heartfelt looks of kindness on their faces.

I drove home and wondered how, with all this support, can I feel so completely alone?

I fell into bed and sent out a text. “I am here” was the reply. It was all I needed and went right to sleep.

I woke up later with an ache in my chest… one that is slowly replacing the fog in my brain. Losing someone hurts, it don’t wish it on anyone, though I think it would hurt more to have lost them and felt nothing at all.

Or as Kelly Bundy on “Married with Children” once said “it is better to have loved and lost than to never have seen Lost in Space”.

I like this better though:

“Believe me, it is no time for words when the wounds are fresh and bleeding; no time for homilies when the lightening’s shaft has smitten and the man lies stunned and stricken. Then let the comforter be silent; let him sustain by his presence, not by his preaching; by his sympathetic silence, not by his speech. Afterward, when the storm is spent, he may venture to open his mouth; afterward, when the morn has dawned, he may seek to “justify the ways of God to man”, for afterward the sufferer will be prepared to hear, and afterward the sufferer himself may be able to extract sweetness from bitterness, music from mourning, songs from sorrow, and “the peaceable fruit of righteousness” from the root of wretchedness and woe.”

George C. Lorimer, Isms Old and New: Winter Sunday Evening

And I think I am getting there.

To acknowledge him, is to acknowledge the potential & the loss of him. And in admitting the loss and the hurt that goes along with it, I am bringing myself closer to the people who will help me heal.

Looking for a new wallpaper the other day, this popped up: