I got up this morning and helped Leif get ready for work- made him breakfast and ironed his shirt. He cleaned up the kitchen for me before I got out of bed so it was a fair trade. After he left I showered and then promptly crawled back into bed.
It is now 1:00 in the afternoon.
I am still in bed.
I feel like there are so many things to take care of and worry about right now that I've made the unconscious decision to turn them all off. I feel like a circuit has been shorted out.
Click. Hum. Silence.
I watched an episode of television while laying in bed and the last scene was of four adult siblings -all with families of their own- hanging out and laughing in the kitchen after Thanksgiving. In the corner, unbeknownst to them, was their mother quietly observing them and obviously quite proud.
My "what would he be like" visions used to only go so far- two or three years in the future. A blond-headed toddler with muddy knees and ruddy cheeks. A freckled face turned up to ask a question for the thousandth time in one day. A smile that reminded me of his father. Now those visions stretch far ahead and I wonder what kind of man he would have become.
Would he have been close to his siblings?
Would he have been a traveller?
What would he have done with his life?
Who would he have fallen in love with?
Would he have had children of his own?
I don't think that these questions will ever go away. Even if I am lucky to have children in the future and they are able to grow up into adults. I will forever be the woman observing from the corner her adult children hanging out and laughing in the kitchen, quite proud of them. But also squinting to see the ghost of their older brother and wondering about the man he would have become.
I don't want to be that woman. I don't want to carry this around forever. It is very, very heavy and I am so incredibly tired of this grief. I want someone to take it away for awhile. I want to feel, even just for an hour, like the person I was before March 31, 2010.
I want to take it from you. I think about my girls missing out on having a cousin named George. I feel the grief everyday. I will never understand completely or never feel it to the same extent. I am sad that I will never have that nephew.
ReplyDeleteLove you, Lisa.
ReplyDeleteThinking of you and wishing there was some way to have a break from it all. xx
ReplyDeleteI still do that. It is hard to stop.
ReplyDelete((hugs)) mama.
I do it too, Brianna. I burst into tears the other day watching a movie because I had the realization that Otis will never fall in love, will never dance with his beloved, will never know that joy of a first kiss...I could go on and on, I know you know.
ReplyDeleteAnd while I understand the desperate longing to have the grief go away, I also know that the grief is the flip side of our loving our sons so completely and tremendously, and I know that neither of us want to lose that love, either.
I think that (well, hope I suppose is a better word)...I hope that in the days/weeks/years/decades ahead, as we watch our families grow and change and evolve, that the pain of these losses also changes and evolves, to a point where it no longer feels quite as heavy or burdensome and feels more like we can wrap ourselves in a blanket of knowing how deeply we loved our firstborn sons.
Much love.
I don't think I understood the meanings of the two words 'never' and 'forever' before G died. Sometimes I have felt that I was caught in a mantrap, one of those evil pointy jaw types that snap shut on your foot as you are innocently wandering about. I used to feel that her absence and my grief were clinging to me, stuck in my flesh and in my bones.
ReplyDeleteAnd they are. I'll always, always wonder what my first daughter would have been like and I'll always be doing that squint, trying to fill in the blanks. But, as Sarah says, perhaps that just tells me that I'll always love her.
Sigh. I want to go back to the person I was as well. I feel like I will ask these same questions about Cullen until the day I leave to travel with him.
ReplyDelete