Miss You Like Crazy - Bearing the Loss

 Yesterday... your eyes opened and thoughts of your upcoming day drifted into your mind. Today, just before your eyes open, you are intensely aware of what has been lost. Someone you loved has gone. As time passes it doesn't matter as much how they left; just that they are gone and you are left clutching the pain of the loss, believing it is all that is left to hold on to.

When we lose someone we love we board an emotional roller coaster. Shock protects us as we process what has happened. Suddenly it seems as though we are peering out through shattered glass windows to see the world. Everything seems broken. We are broken.

In the beginning, we relive every day of the week like the last one before our world shuddered and began to shatter. Last Monday I was doing this with that person... on and on it goes until a week has been traversed. Soon comes the time when you must travel the roads traveled that last day. What were they thinking when they passed this intersection, where were they going? They went into this store that last evening; were they happy? We wonder if they knew; did they have any idea that tomorrow would never come for them? Is this macabre behavior? No, it is the human mind approaching reality as it emerges from the shock of the loss. Let it be; it is a necessary process that protects us.

Tucked in between all of these emotions are the sudden memories that spring, uninvited, into our minds. We remember conversations, special times, and all the things that we are left to embrace as the healing begins. They are uninvited because we imagine that we must not look at happy things until we have embraced all the pain and wrung every last tear drop out of it. This is how we pay homage to the memory of the one we loved. There is the idea that we can't be happy because we believe they will never be happy again. This is the roller coaster ride of the grief-stricken, trudging up the hills so slowly and flying down the other side as we encounter the next reality we have been safeguarded from.

Does it get better? This is trauma; and trauma talks. It must talk; it is how we are able to finally release the shock and horror of losing someone we loved. It is how we arrive at a place where we understand that a much bigger hand than ours is guiding life. It is how we arrive at the most necessary destination; acceptance. And it is here that we can step off the roller coaster and all the pain we endured on the ride.

It is also here that we are able to embrace the memories that are warm and funny, the ones that are healing for us. Even though we continue missing them like crazy, we survived. And this was the goal.