Carry on Till Tomorrow

I don't listen to music anymore. Even the happy songs can make my heart sad. When I write though, it is because a song started running though my head and would not stop until I wrote what it evoked in my mind. I feel that for some reason, it is something that needs writing. I find that it is not only the newly bereaved that ask this question, the long suffering do too. 'How do I go on?' Oh how I wish I knew. How I want to reach out and comfort you and tell you that it will be okay. But that would be a lie. That part of our life will never be okay. It does not mean that the other parts of our life cannot be good.

We are made up of many different parts. The parts that love, hurt, cry, laugh, feel joy etc. When someone we love passes from our presence, the blow is crushing. We cannot separate any part of our life from this event. We feel total emptiness, complete pain. It takes over every little thing we do, every thought we have. As we try to look toward the future, all we see is time rolling by without the ones we love. Death has tainted life as we knew it. It changed everything right down to our very soul. No longer do we find joy in the sunrises and sunsets, the sound of the birds, the colorful rainbows because 'they' are not there to see, hear, smell, experience it with us. We do not want to try new things because 'they' cannot. We are caught in a whirlpool of sorrow and it seems that it will not calm down anytime soon, if ever.

How do we go on? In the early days, we do not. We have to go through that fire of grief. If we try to deny it, push it away, hide from it, it will still be waiting and it will be stronger until we start to deal with it. How do we deal with it? We each walk the same path but we are not the same as each other. You can read how others survive, try it and find it does not work for you. It is like most things that are new in our lives, we learn. Yeah, that is a dreadful thought but if we never learn to crawl, we will never dance. Do you want to dance someday? You say no right now. Eventually, the music strikes up again, flows into our heart and our feet slowly move us forward; and we resist it. Of course we do. Music without our loved one rings hollow.

I once believed that I would not live past one second of losing one of my kids. Maybe, at times, I feel guilty that I did not drop lifeless right beside Tim. My soul betrayed me and kept me here. Each day my mantra was, 'I can't do this.' It's not right, it's not the natural order of things. My son should be alive and if anyone had to go, it should have been me. I think about that natural order. Parents should go before their kids. So I ask this question and beg forgiveness if it hurts. If the one you love is in deep pain, be it of mind or body, is it then that you should go first so they can hurt even more deeply for losing you? Do we want them to suffer what we are suffering? Would we wish this on them then? Some may think this does not apply to the one they lost for they were taken maybe by an accident or by someone else. Maybe I think too deeply, but we don't know if there would have been something in their future that was worst then death. How could anything be worse then death.

We want our pain to ease. We cannot image carrying this level of such devastation with us until our time comes. We see no promise in tomorrow for it will be more of the same. Our loss, our sorrow, our pain. We don't want to hear it, that they are gone for a reason. We don't care, we hurt. Never did I believe such pain existed. But I will carry this for Tim and I will learn to be grateful that he will never carry this himself. I would not wish this on anyone, so how could I wish it on him. I know that, for me, the pain changes. It started out as every second, every thought, every movement The hurt so all consuming there was no place for anything else. It felt as though the world rested on my heart. I still have days like that, but it is not every second now. Yes, it is for life. It does not go away, it changes. How do we go on? We learn even when we don't want to. We carry on till tomorrow. 

*The title of this piece came from an old Badfinger song called 'Carry on Till Tomorrow.' I woke this morning with it running though my head and knew I had to write. Google it, read the lyrics. My hope is that you all will find that path to tomorrow. It is a rocky, painful road but maybe there is a rainbows end. We won't know until we get there.*