CS Lewis compares losing someone close to you to amputation of a limb. Losing an arm or a leg doesn't kill you. Physically, you can live without either. Eventually, you learn to walk again, to smile again, to become a functioning human being again. But the disability is always there. The sadness is like an elephant on your back. An invisible elephant. Even though you look on the outside like an invidual who's returned to a normal level of functioning, you're still that person with a missing body part. There is no "back to normal". I ran across this quote online over the weekend and it really hit home with me. I wake up many days and in that moment in between sleep and consciousness, I forget for a minute that Virginia's death is my reality. This is not a nightmare, this is my life. And that fact just keeps sinking in over and over, and the grief feels incredibly fresh, as raw as it felt in that first few minutes after we lost her. Today is one of those days.
For in grief, nothing "stays put". One keeps emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am in a spiral?
But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?
How often--will it be for always?--how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss until this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.
~CS Lewis, "A Grief Observed"
2 comments:
I'm sorry, Randi. I can't imagine how awful that must feel. :(
I am sorry your having one of those days, I totally understand. I have those days too. I still think "I cannot believe this is my life right now". At least these days are not as frequent anymore. Hang in there.
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