Sink or Swim

From birth I have been a loner. It was not by choice in the beginning, but circumstances. As I got older, alone became choice as well as being ingrained in my DNA. It did not matter who I was with or where I was, I was always on the outside looking in. It did not bother me, I liked my solitude. Then, I had my two kids. One cannot stay to themselves when they have a newborn in their arms. The heart opens so wide one could fit the universe inside of it and still have room to spare. I was never alone when I was with them. One day, they grew up and had families of their own and my world enlarged to encompass three grandsons as well. The place they have in my heart is what keeps me going everyday even as the grief washes my soul with sorrow.

The lesson of life is, sink or swim. We learn it in many different ways for different situations. Never will we learn it more though then when our loved one has died. This time literally becomes life or death for us.We are left to carry on without those who made our lives complete; and we don't want to. Now we are an empty shell that needs filling or it will waste and rot away. Nothing will fit into the space where they reside, for though they are gone, they are not gone. So hard to wrap ones mind around. Our very essence is mired in the want, need and pain for the one who is no longer physically here. For a long time, nothing else can get through the wall our heart instantly put up the moment we knew they were gone. The heart seems to have an instinct of it's own for self protection. It provides safety for us when we cannot do it for ourselves. It shields us for a short time as our shocked mind grapples with the unimaginable.

We sink. We sink so fast and so deep that even we don't know where we have gone. Those around us see it as a time of grief and we will get past it, move on with life. Usually only the ones who have not suffered assume this. It's what we are all taught and believe until it happens to us. It is a struggle to pull ones self from the brink because we do not have the desire to do so. We have to reach even deeper than our despair to find that spark of life, that reason to go on and we have to reassure our self daily that it is there. We start to swim and sink again. The demands of a world moving on intrudes, puts it burdens on our shoulders and adds to the weight that carries us deeper. That is another rip tide we have to fight constantly. We now have to relearn how to walk and talk in a senseless world with a lot of, shall we say, uncaring people. And then we swim again.

For a long while we allow the tides to carry us where ever they will. We do not have the energy to fight them. We are exhausted, lost and even if we came near an island we would not see it. We only have eyes for that which is no longer here. We swim, we sink, we swim again. One day we realize that we are swimming more than we are sinking. It happens so gradually that it remains unnoticed for a long time. We still sink and we sink deep, but the periods are further in-between each other. The sinking is no less painful, but it changes, stays but changes. The swim becomes less stressful, but we will grieve, maybe forever, maybe not. The pain we feel at those times is no less intense then the moment it happened, no less devastating. The quieter pain is with us every moment, it is a part of our life now.

When it all first began, we had people around us. Their words were mostly not correct but we knew they usually meant well. Within weeks, they are gone. None realize, not them or us, that it is really further down the road that we need them. In the early days, we are still so far away in our hurt that we know they are there, but we have no connection to them. It is later, when reality has set in, when our hearts finally catch up to the knowledge in our heads, that we need them the most. If we are lucky, we will have someone waiting for us to surface, pull our heads above the water, wrap their arms around us and silently let us grieve. We have started to swim. We all mistakenly think that it is the early days that the wounded need us. It is not until we are the wounded that we know that is not so. We need them later, when we have cleared the darkness from our eyes. We need them when we have become too tired to swim any more, just to hold us above the waters for a little while.