Grief Speaks 3

          Tightness and pain in the back of my throat.  My heart hurting physically.  Like I'd been crying all night yet without the relief of real tears.  Silent sobs racked my body while my mind dreamed and my heart broke again.  Then....it was time to get up and face a new day, another day without her.  Another day to desperately long for her smile, her laughter, her presence.  Another day spent trying to escape the sadness yet wanting to remember her so badly. Making the decision to remember and bear the consequence of pain for doing so.

     Grief catches me again and I am helpless.  My tears never extinguish the fire of this pain that rages through my soul.  And like my addiction to oxygen I go down under, then come up for more.  It will never be ok that she is gone, ripped from my arms by a cruel thief, the lowest of the low, cancer.  I hiss the word in disgust.  I rage at my helplessness to change the truth.  I look in the mirror and starring back at me is a woman who has aged, her eyes shadowed by sadness.  Bringing my thoughts full circle to my loss, I always end in the same spot.....where loss meets denial and they look each other square in the eye.

      I'm there again, next to her, watching helplessly while her life ebbs away.  Powerless to stop it.  I would give my life..... my health..... anything to stop it, to stop death from taking her.  But I can't.  I can only watch as she struggles to breath....to live.  And I can't stop it, it keeps taking her, no matter how tight I hold her hand she keeps slipping away.  I scream inside NOOOOO!!! While I whisper soothing words, and tell her I love her, over and over.... for the last time.

   I am Rachel who refuses to be comforted, for her child is not.  I am sadness, denial and rage.  There aren't enough words to describe the loss, it fills my heart, rules my thoughts and controls the floodgates of my tears....which flow, violently purging the pain and confusion leaving behind the desolate truth.  She is gone. 

     Here I am another step ahead in the healing process.  My tears produce honesty and force me to face the truth.  Working through grief is like hopping on stones scattered across a raging river.  I gingerly attempt to hop from stone to stone, trying not to get wet, or worse, fall in and drown.  Grief has the power to sweep me away, off my feet, to be ground along the bottom, bruised and battered by the rocks and the current.  I slip and fall and am lost in complete abandon of grief, yet I must come up.  Gasping for air, squinting in the sun.  I begin again.....the journey of grief, and try not to fall in.