five in the morning

A gentle cool breeze and light rain and it's six weeks now today since I saw you look at me with your soft sweet eyes. A month and a half since I talked to you and held your face and hands. The days go by like massive heavy anvils on my shoulders. "So how are you doing," I still get asked which suggests to me that some think I should be further along in the grief process while I fear I may never get beyond this looms and grows. My precious mom, can you hear me when I cry out your name and is it you who wipes away my tears when I can no longer see? I am truly broken.

My health is suffering now and my mind wanders aimlessly over scenarios of a future where loneliness and sadness share the majority of every breath that I take. I am certain this way of life is not sustainable and I question how much longer God will allow me to be here. You worried for me much the same way I did for you while I spent my time trying to keep you well and alive as best I could. I could tell your anguish not for yourself but for me at what you knew was coming must have been excruciating for you but God needed you with him and you had already done as much as you could to prepare me for what was to come, a life without you. So why then do I wander through the house room to room and then the other house with no purpose? What is my plan for the new me who looks back from the mirror and doesn't recognize the person he sees? So am I to map out a future for someone who seems to be on a collision course consumed with sadness? What does that kind of future look like I ask myself as I lay awake in the silence and darkness.

In the first few weeks, I stayed wrapped up in getting things done that had to be done. I'm not so much in a hurry anymore. It's becoming clear to me that when all that has to be done is done, there will be nothing left for me to do but to live a life I'm not ready for. A life full of mind numbing silence when I need to talk with my best friend. Unending days when things I want to share only with you go unshared forced back deep inside my mind and then forgotten and meaningless over time. Mom's laughter, her soft gentle voice, brushing her hair, it's killing me just thinking I will never experience those again. I have recordings of her sweet voice I cannot listen to. Photos that have me at the point of breaking apart.

The rumbling and piercing silence is brutal. I started her car today and forgot about it so it stayed running a long time. Went outside to watch the soft rain and began to get emotional. It begins with this mass inside my stomach and it moves up towards my throat and into my eyes. It's inescapable and cannot be stopped. Will this be my every day now? Why would I want this and how will I avoid it? I'm at a point in my life where I can have just about anything I want, go anywhere and it all means nothing. I've reached the place I always thought I wanted to be but without my mom it's a cold and unlivable place. Just one more minute with my mom to hold her and talk to her and hear her voice again..

Things and places are to be shared with those who make your heart warm enough to beat. All of my tomorrows will now be spent alone with no one to call, no one to talk to. I will eat alone, laugh and cry alone, think too much and mourn the loss of and every person who ever made me happy, supported me, fed me and made me proud of myself, all gone now.  I think about the faces, the eyes, the smiles and laughter, talks, and sharing life with the people who have passed, and they are all gone now forever and never coming back.

That is where things stand for me today. The difference perhaps in my circumstance and most other people is that all of those important people who kept me alive and wanting to do well and keep going were all inside just one person. I have a couple great friends who have stepped up and some family who check-in and would do anything for me if there was something they could do but there isn't. No one and nothing can fill the void left by my mom's passing. No amount of time is going to lessen the silence and despair that I feel. God and only God can help me now and I'm reaching out to be sure..

Meantime, I will write..