Little Things

The biggest hurt and deepest pain is when our child dies. Death itself brings pain unless you cannot feel at all, but the loss of a child has nothing that compares, at least for me. I have lost many and find that if I combined the pain of the losses, they could not come close to the loss of my son. I do not say this to minimize the sorrow of any lost loved one. I am saying that for me, in my life, no pain could have prepared me for this. The worst happened and everything else became small potatoes in comparison. When my dad passed my thought later on was if I could survive that, I could survive anything. Not true. He was my hero, the one I could depend on to love me no matter what. The pain was immeasurable at that time and the walk a long one, but I survived. It did not prepare me for the loss of my son. Until you lose a child, you really think that the grief and sorrows are all pretty much the same. Until you lose a child.

When someone close to your heart and soul leaves, the hole is great. All these massive changes happen all at once to everything. Your thought process changes. How you view life changes, How you feel toward others change. Change becomes the elephant in the room, the small word that you can't get away from. It is a constant battle in you and in your life to explain this change or at least bring some light to others. It is a losing battle. Once again, unless one has walked the path one cannot understand the complete change that death has brought to us. Something we do not have the power to do anything about. I've talked myself blue and still saw the confusion in others eyes. In time, I stopped explaining and decided that either take me for who I am or leave me alone. That may seem harsh, but with what we already deal with, dealing with constant 'I want the old you back' and no one getting that the old you is gone, it became necessary. The old me has become a little thing in the light of day.

Death is a sudden stop that throws you into the deep waters, no life jacket, no rescue boat. No one can save you from what death demands from you. We all have to pay the ferryman sooner or later. There are no instant cures, short cuts or pill that will ease you through this. If you try to hide, it will find you and bring other consequences with it. No matter how much we rage at the heavens, our feet stay on the path of sorrow. The world becomes smaller, less important. What we thought were the big things in our lives become nothing, less than nothing. You start to unconsciously pick and choose the things that have meaning and they are totally different than what you once thought. Maybe one of the biggest changes, not a small thing, is how we feel about the people we know. It shocks us to realize that what we have always thought love was, is false.

We are saturated from birth with the worlds idea of love. We follow along like sheep for many have gone before us and should know what they are talking about. We just accept and move along, at least until we lose someone so close to our hearts. I have learned that love can suddenly disappear. That was a shocker for we are taught that real love is beyond forever. We beat ourselves up when this happens. We understand this change less then anyone. How is it possible to love someone and then, poof, it is gone? You will be accused of falsely loving them in the first place, but that is not true even as you wonder the same thing. When we are at our lowest, beat up and bloody on the ground, we are not going to thank the one who walks by and kicks us as hard as they can while we are down. That is how love can die. Seems like such a little thing, but it is not. It breaks another piece of our hearts before that spot hardens, becomes changed. I have found that while my love deepened for many family and friends, there are some that it does not beat for anymore. It is not something that is within our control, it happens.

It is now the small things in life that can send us into a tail spin. Things that we were passionate about before seem petty now. I really don't care if that dress makes your butt look big or if that lipstick makes your skin seem shallow. Watching the world fight itself brings on sorrow for there are more important things in life. The other day my laptop stopped working. Silly? Yes, but I had a complete and total melt down. My pictures of those I love, my writings, my touch to the world went dark. But really, it was my touch with Tim. That computer was my touch with Tim. I completely lost it for the whole day, something I have not done since the early months of Tim's death. Nothing could console me though my husband tried so hard. A little thing, like the loss of a computer, can make you feel like you have started all over again. We get slapped with these things everyday. I will probably break again, but I know I have come a long ways even as I have a long ways to go.