Pulled Under
Originally uploaded by unpossibles
While I wrote my last post earlier this afternoon, I didn't publish it until late this evening. I needed to do some last minute edits, which for some reason took more time than I expected. By the time I was done, the kids were all off to bed, and I sat in the living room, quietly preparing to venture back down to my bedroom.
The way I describe it, you would think my bedroom is a bit of a dungeon. Tonight it sort of feels that way. I came down here, and the room is very cold. It is silent, and my heart is quickly feeling quite heavy.
I hate this. Dread. Agony. Reality.
It all sort of catches up with me. The coldness of the room quickly permeated my heart, and my mood is slipping out of my control. Tears are welling up, and I know what's ahead. I should sleep, yet I am too restless. I fear turning out the light, as sorrow will over power my prior optimism.
This is such a painful process. I know I have no choice to make here. I have no control. In one week it will be seven months. How I wish I could go back, and hold him once more. How I wish I could feel held.
The darkness has arrived. I am once again pulled under.
slow deep breaths. that's all i know to say. i understand that wish. my Dragon smelled so good to me. i loved waking up from possibly a bad dream, and being able to put my foot against his leg. that's all i had to do. one little touch, and he'd roll over and wrap me in his arms. i was safe and loved.
ReplyDeletei keep you in my thoughts and prayers always. i wish you peace.
Being pulled under is only a problem when you can't surface again. As long as you keep coming back up it's all good. And by "good", I mean normal and just the nature of the thing.
ReplyDeleteYour description of the room - cold and silent - is how our house felt to me after Don died. As I've written in the past, I went away for a few months, doing that thing everyone is so quick to advise - don't do anything radical for a year. I did not actually wait a year to decide to sell the farm. I returned to find the house still cold and silent. I quickly concluded that Don was not there. If he is somewhere, it is in the wild places we visited together. That's when I tend to feel the greatest connection. I alluded to that in my most recent post. The feeling is not the warm, spiritual feeling that some people describe, but just the same comfortable feeling that I had when hiking around or even driving around with Don. It's more as though he exists within my mind - almost like I am almost two people, or one with an added dimension. The other day, I was describing to a friend how it is that I can do many things - carpentry, plumbing, electrical wiring, and a bunch of other stuff. It's as though I aborbed the collective knowledge of my dad and Don. It took awhile for me to come to this point in my thoughts. I find myself wondering what Don or my dad would have said about this or that, what they might have done in the same situation. Sometimes it seems like solutions come from some place which seems impossible to have been within me. Difficult to explain some of these feelings, but they have grown rather than faded. Maybe it is the things I'm doing - going places that Don and I would have loved to explore together. On a subconscious level, it's probable that I feel we're doing this journey together. As time passes, I've come to realize that there are no rules to how we deal with loss and grief. When I took a couple of courses in anthropology and sociology at university, I was struck at home every culture as ways of dealing with loss - and often of including the deceased in day to day living. Maybe our western culture does not have a way to include the dead in our everyday rituals. Just some musings...
ReplyDeleteTo echo wNs, keep breathing, deep, soothing breaths. Let the grief wash over you and take you under for as long as you need to shed some of the built up sorrow so you can come to the surface again. You know that going through the grief eventually makes you lighter, for a while, and you will float to the surface to get a little fresh air.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry that tonight is tough for you. Just know that there are many of us out here who completely understand the debilitating darkness and we'll be here when you get back to the surface again. I wish you peace and light tomorrow.
Love Deb
How well I know this feeling. It's been only six weeks since I lost my husband and soulmate. I dread going to bed alone in a cold, empty bed... so I stay up, keep busy until I'm so exhausted that I know I won't lie awake with my thoughts. And then I stumble through the work day half asleep. It's so hard, but reading this, I feel a little less alone.
ReplyDelete