Words for the Journey

He was born in Medford Oregon on July 26th, 1980 at Rogue Valley Memorial Hospital after 36 grueling hours of labor, I had turned 17 four months earlier. In fact, the same Dr. delivered Andy's Uncle Dana in the same Hospital room exactly 15 years earlier to the day forging a bond between them that would withstand a lifetime.

It’s okay to Not be okay…

Many times, when we talk or write from a place of deep emotion, we have a hard time finding the words to express what we want to say. Recently, I wrote that the second year, to me, was worse than the first. This is true and not true; I hope I can find the words to explain what I mean.

The way you feel about me doesn't define me. You will not cause me to re-think my priorities or examine my virtues. You may love, like, hate or be neutral towards me, that is your prerogative. Of course I would prefer to be looked upon as good, inspiring, or any of the positive human characteristics we know of... but it's not essential to me if I am not.

 The Sun opened up like a bud inside your heartshining with resolute beautyof who you are

My loving husband Howard has been gone five months. How can it already be five months? Yet sometimes it feels like 5 years. It's been a long time since I looked in to his beautiful blue eyes. Seems like forever since I held him close, smelled his after shave that I miss so much, and slept in his embrace.

A friend said to me "I don't know how you do it". I told him "you just do". I have to convince myself that Andy is up there, over there, wherever he is and is rooting for me to go on. Pick myself up, dust off the dirt and get back on the horse so to speak.

We go to sleep at night with the knowledge that the sun will rise tomorrow. The moon, whether it is waxing, waning, full or eclipsed, will soar across the night sky. Stars will hang in the deepest of space. These are truths we don't question for they have always been there. Death changes that promise of another tomorrow.

The grief path is like no other. It is cruel and alienating.  It changes your relationship with the world and those around you. You become a stranger in a world where your perspective cannot be fully understood by those around you who have not been touched by life’s biggest tragedy: losing half of yourself to eternity.

Grief and deep sorrow struck my family with hurricane force the day my beautiful daughter died. Reeling from shock and in disbelief, we picked through the wet, rotting debris of our wrecked lives, searching for the familiar. Not one element of my family’s existence remained untouched in the aftermath of this formidable storm.

"I never dreamed anything could be so painful. It's like my insides are being put through a meat grinder, or like half my heart has been ripped away," Lorraine said, wringing a dishtowel as she stared into her lap.Then, looking up into my eyes, she asked, "Where did he go? How could he leave? What am I supposed to do? How am I going to handle this? Who am I now?"

We talk about or write of our loss, we are scratching the surface of what we really feel. The grief is so shocking, there are no words to honestly describe what it is, what we are truly feeling. That may be for the best because as we talk to others, they cannot comprehend that small amount sorrow we share, the true depth would more than others could take.