I find myself at times gasping for a breath I didn’t know I was holding. The tears begin and my chest contracts with an ache I’ve never felt before. Sort of like a charlie horse in my broken heart. It surprises me mirroring the middle of the night leg cramps I used to get growing up. “Eat bananas” you’d tell me. If only you could give me advice on how to get through this.
Sleep and Hunger evade me. I force myself to eat but everything tastes like I’ve burnt my tongue. Grief even has a flavor. I try to sleep. I get into bed and stare at the celing. I can hear the cat purring above my head and feel the cool air from the fan. My mind wanders to what the calendar holds tomorrow and I realize it’s the day you will be cremated. I have a fleeting thought that it’s good you won’t be cold anymore. That you hate to be cold.
I can tell that the kids are starting to wear thin of my tears. Laurel sighs when she catches me crying. I refuse to hide my grief from them. You are worth grieving for. Your death has left a space in my heart. In my daily life. I want your grandchildren to see what mourning looks like. What filling that space with peace and tears and gratitude looks like. They need to learn how to pay tribute in the small corners of the every day. How to honor a family member who sacrificed and suffered.
Oh, Mama how I miss you. I see you everywhere. In Laurel’s long thin hands. In my climbing roses. In my hot tea in the mornings. I know these small things will bring me comfort in time, but for now they are the salt in my very new raw wound.
I know you are finally whole and complete and it is my turn to ache and be broken.
Your pain is almost tangible. I’m holding you in my heart, I love you so. I know the light of heaven is shining on your beautiful Mother.
ReplyDeleteI thought of you this morning when I read this:
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
I love your heart. Your words. Your honesty. “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.”
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