Balancing on the Edge

We learn early in life that it is a cruel world. We also learn that it can be beautiful. You hear from your parents that life is not fair so suck it up buttercup. You see that unfairness everyday just by watching the News as thousands die for no reason. It is such a constant we are use to it, until someone close to us dies. It is then, in ways never expected that we find the true heartbeat of the world we have been born into. It is then that the veil of complacency is ripped from our eyes. We see no beauty, no joy in this life at the moment of loss, we only see darkness and despair stretching into a bleak future. That first step is hard to take because everything we have known about ourselves and others has been sucked into a great black void. Nothing makes sense, nothing matters.

The night I found Tim, I felt the world tilt. It stayed tilted. For months I wondered how I was still standing. I wondered why I didn't jump from the bridge into sweet oblivion. I still have days where I stand at the edge, but now I just look into the deep remembering my precious son. I also hope that if I get dementia that his loss is not the one thing I remember more clearly than anything else. My new phobia. As it is, every where I go, everything I do has a touch of Tim in it. The world is a constant reminder that he is no longer in it. Life stopped in so many ways for me. I quit the world for a while. I stopped writing novels and started writing blogs. I quit painting, reading, being alive. Everything gone, everything lost. How does one go on from this?

In the beginning, you don't notice that those around you are different. There is no room in your heart or mind as grief swamps you so completely. You feel the differences, you just don't really acknowledge them to yourself. Yes, you see the world as a cruel, cold place, but you don't realize just how much so until you have stepped a short distance away from your sorrow. That new reality is waiting to punch you in the heart before you have learned to stand again. I truly did not know that such hate and meanness could exist. I did not know that people would use your pain and loss to try and destroy you with it. I know now. I will never un-know it.

There is another side to this coin though. In these last 12 months I have met hundreds of people who are so full of compassion and empathy, I wonder how they survive this world. Because of them, I see the beauty again. I won't forget the ugly underside, but I can live with it as it balances out with these amazing people. For each one who turned away from me, a hundred more have stepped in. There is no need to ask for understanding, to explain myself, to remain silent, they already get it. It is sad why they get it for they walk where I walk. They shed the tears that I shed. They know the hurt, the sorrow, the loss. It is a long, slow road, this grief. It has more causalities than any war for it is a war of eternity. So many have set their feet upon this dark beach. We all wait for the same boat, the one that will take our hurt away. It never arrives. In the process of waiting, we find that we know each other. In ways, there is comfort in that.

I don't think that grief ever goes away. It changes in small ways and sometimes big ways. It's different for everyone even as it is the same. I know that some grief fades and some don't. Have you ever seen the pointy edges of a snow flake? It is how I see grief. Some of those edges will melt or get knocked off, some will stay, solid, frozen hard; stab you often. Some days those edges are razor sharp, some days they dull a little. It is difficult to find balance among the sharp edges and sometimes there is no balance, we just fall. It is not important how often we fall, it's important how often we get up. It's important to find balance between the harshness and the beauty and let ourselves see the bright colors again. It's important to hear the music and dance by the moonlight. Maybe they hear, see and feel through us now and we need to take it all in to its fullness.

I know that tomorrow, I may fall down. I also know I will stand back up. Nothing can change what is or erase what hurts but there are moments of gentle ease. The waves that crash on the shore by day may find ease by the light of the moon. I look for those places where the sand is smoothed out and blank. I write his name above the tide line. I paint emotions into the canvass and write about sorrow on a blue windy sky. Tim, my son, my heart.