everything feels like defeat. achy, tired, weariness. we just hikedamountain. we just got home from war. we just did the biggest thing possible, without a pat on the back, without a parade, without a book deal, without a crowd, without being knighted. without a goddamn break. there is no one waiting for our return with a hot soup and a bed to catch us in.
get back to it.
take kids to school. fix the car. brush your teeth. stand up and sit down. say words. smile. answer the phone.
my dad is gone. i know where he is. i don't know where he is. god please let heaven be real. please be true. i need it .
i need my dad. please be here.
it wasn't supposed to happen that way.
i spend so much energy manipulating the images i see when i close my eyes, that i can't sleep. when i stumble on an image of him healthy and whole, i just keep thinking it. holding it there in front of my eyes. replacing it with the other images.
hold it there.
people die. people i know lost their dad or their mom. it happens. i'm in the club now. i'm one of those it happened to. i lost my dad. i lost him. where is he? he doesn't feel gone, but i can't call him. i can't hear him.
get back to it. the living.
how do we do that? how do we make this have meaning? how do you carry it ?
Oh Nina, my darling friend. I wish I knew for you. There you could do step 1., step 2., step 3., and then the pain would somehow be gone. That you could somehow, someday stop missing him. I wish you could mark that day on the calender like anything else. All I know, and it isn't much, is that one day, you will think of him, and then suddenly--you will smile. You will find your heart smiling again.
ReplyDelete"He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever."
Revelation 21:4