When All Hope is Gone

Where do we go from here? When all hope is gone, what do we do after the worse has happened? I remember when I was a child and our large families would come together, my dad and his brothers would go out into the yard to kill chickens for the feast. They'd quickly wring their heads from their bodies. That was the way of things at that time. The chickens, maybe not realizing they should lay down, would jump up, headless and run around the yard running into the side of the house only to jump up again and run into a tree. This would go on for a few minutes before the body would catch up with what had happened to it and they would fall down and stay down. For months, I felt like those chickens. My brain knew Tim was gone but my heart refused to accept it. I did not understand why my body did not just give up and lay still. I did not understand how I was waking up in the mornings. All I knew was that all hope was gone, no one could give me the one thing that I wanted, my son. Nothing mattered anymore, nothing.

I have not been long into this new grief. I do not have answers or a sure-fire cure for what has laid so many at the brink of a new madness. The important things in our lives have become trivial compared to the loss. Where once we loved to read, books become uninteresting. Writing, impossible. Eating becomes a chore that is easily forgotten. Sleep is a stranger in the darkness. Suddenly, we cannot do what we use to because we use to do them with the one we lost. Everything becomes 'before' and 'after'.  The moment they left becomes seared into our brains, out shining every thing that came before they left. Running across something that was theirs floods us with unimaginable anguish closing our minds to all that is around us to zero in on that moment in time. It's hard to believe that such a short moment becomes bigger than the universe. All happiness and hope have been sucked from our lives. We find we have no purpose. We question why we are here. We live everyday, every second in that total horror of loss. What we have known and understood about death changes when we lose that which was so tied to our hearts.

I started writing about Tim about two days after he passed. Why? I don't know. It suddenly seemed important that I tell the world about a wonderful man who walked and talked and loved and laughed. It was important that they knew his name, that he did not just disappear from the hearts and souls of those who loved him. It was important to me. I cried over every word I wrote. I cried as I read it back to my husband before posting it. Months later, I cry when I reread what I wrote. I am not sorry I wrote about him even though it caused me deep, deep pain. To me, he will live forever in the words I wrote. It helped me step a little sideways, to take a step away from the pain that cannot be named but felt. I also keep a hand written journal. It is not a daily journal but when things become too much, it is like putting that poison on paper, getting it out of my system for a night. It comes back of course, but each time, it comes back a little less powerful. Slowly, I find things that help me step a little away. I have days where nothing will help. On those days, I let the hurt and sorrow run it course and for a little while, I do feel release.

To be honest, I do not know what comes next. But life was like that before Tim left, it just did not matter so much then. Suddenly, your eyes become open to world you never wanted to know, a world that makes no sense. Why live if we have to die, what purpose is there in that. What should it matter to me if my purpose might be to help others? After all, we all die so what good is it? Yet a tiny spark is lit. I feel grateful when someone tells me that my words are or have helped them. It pushes the darkness away a little. Even though we all grieve different and alone on our path, we are all basically the same, we have lost, we hurt, we grieve and we search for answers or a kind word. We search for hope even though we feel all hope is gone. I think that somewhere, within our bruised hearts, that spark stays lit even though we deny it. That spark helps us put one foot in front of the other, that spark holds hope.

I look at my husband, my daughter, my step son, my grandsons and I see life and hope. I see possibilities. Yes, I could lose anyone of them some day, but if I let that fear of losing again rule my days, then I have missed the joy they represent, I take the joy they deserve to feel in their lives. It is easier to hold onto this fear then to learn to let it go. My mind rebels against letting it go because I now know a pain unimaginable and don't want to feel it again or add to it. That is wrong thinking for the simple fact that I love them. Whether I bury my head in the sand to hide from further pain or not will not work. I see that if I do that, I may lose anyone of them anyway and also lose being a part of them when I had the chance to. Hiding and burying yourself away will not stop further pain if it is to be, but cause even more because you chose to step away from those who love you, who you love.

Where do we go when all hope is gone? We reach deep inside, deeper than we have ever done before and find that spark. No, it will not bring them back. It will not change what was, but it will change what is. We do not walk alone in our sorrow. We are alone in our minds. No one but us lives there, no one but us knows what is going on inside. Has it not always been that way? Even before the sorrows?