I love to write. But keeping my life afloat and investing so much energy into running my business has taken its toll. I have had no room for writing. It is a true casualty of my work.
But today, with a cloudy, post-rain sky, and the cold we are not used to in Southern California still upon us, I took a little downtime to come back to the blog. And to my utter amazement, saw that my last post was April 2016. Who Knows Where the Time Goes (anyone remember that Judy Collins song?? Haunting.....)
Time loses perspective after someone you love dies. You do not have a clue where or how it goes. You sometimes have no realization of days passing. You wonder how you got from June to July, or from morning to night, and don't have good recall of anything you did. A person drowning in grief never knows where the time goes. Or even if it goes.
In the first few weeks after my son died, I found myself sitting outdoors under a large navel orange tree that graces the far front corner of my property. It was a favorite place of his to sit. I often would join him. He and I shared more than a few conversations sitting under the orange tree. Quality time for us.
Then, after he was gone, I found a little peace by sitting under its great branches again. Sitting there, with no awareness of the passage of time, became a daytime reality anchor. In the evening, my anchor was walking the dog (his dog). But during the day -- at least when I was home and not distracted by the numbing routine of "back at work," I would find myself sitting on the cast metal open weave bench that was almost hiding under the branches of the old tree, just starting at the house, the expanse of lawn, the trees, the sun, the sky. It was an amazement to me that life seemed so normal, back under the orange tree. How could the house be standing? How could the sun rise and set and move across the sky? Why did the plants keep growing? Why was I still alive?
Questions to which there is no answer, when grief has kicked you so hard you struggle to breathe.
I cannot know why I kept breathing. Why I kept going. Why I went to sleep, woke up, drove my car, spoke to people, did my work, drank my coffee, walked the dog. It was as though there were 2 people inside me. One, the mother who had lost her only son, her first born, her tether to life; the other, the practical, rise above adversity survivor. For a long time I did not know which one would win.
Under that tree, I found myself saying, over and over, like a mantra, "Mat, how am I supposed to live the rest of my life without you?" Eventually, I heard in my head the 12 step entreaty to take one day, or one hour, or one minute, at a time. I remember hearing veterans of the addiction wars saying that eventually the "one minutes" turn into hours, then days, and finally years. I never understood the depth of that concept until I needed to survive minute to minute -- because imagining living with that excruciating pain of loss for more than another minute was just too much to comprehend.
And here I am. Millions of minutes later. Still living. Finally enjoying music again. And laughing, a real, from the heart, laughter. Living and not just getting by. Perhaps seeing a glimpse of love again.
The survivor in me prevailed, but I doubt through any conscious thought. It turns out the survivor part of me was a lot stronger than I sensed during those first few months after losing what I thought was my necessary connection to life and the world.
I came to understand that despite that the despair which in the early days of grief engulfed every cell of me and told me life no longer was in my future, somehow my soul determined (without any input from my conscious self) that my journey here was not through.
I am very glad that my journey didn't end. That my survivor self won out over abject despair.
At times while these millions of minutes have passed, I have reminded myself that women endure great pain to give birth to our children. So, it seems fitting that we endure even greater pain when our children leave this existence before we do. But just as we return to our individual lives after life comes forth, we must return to our individual paths after that life leaves us. We are our own individual souls with separate journeys and lessons, and that remains true even after the loss of a soul we thought we just could not live without.
And so, now, years later, I indeed wonder, where has the time gone? How has so much time gone by without my constant awareness of the clock ticking and of time's minutes melding into the great span of years? It's been an amazing, although gradual, revelation to myself: I no longer survive one minute at a time. Sometimes (like at his birthday or his memorial day) I regress to needing to get through the day by each minute or hour. Yet now the minutes of those 24 hours zip by and then it's the next day and the next day, and then, voila! - life has gone on another week and month without my collapse.
I look back at the landscape of my life created in the past few years, and see it painted and sculpted by the grief journey I've traveled. Miraculously, that landscape is no longer barren, but reflects that I have continued to live. I realize all of this really has been my path, and my life. The pain of my losses continues to inhabit my being every day on some level, but it no longer keeps me from continuing on my soul's journey in this existence. And I find myself more than a little glad that somehow, the survivor part of my being saved myself from that journey on the river Styx and returned me to a path of light.
For those who have helped me navigate back to my life, I will be forever grateful. For those who choose to join me or remain with me in the path that is now my life, I will welcome the company with both love and gratitude. And with anyone who dares to love me knowing where I've been, and what the pain of grief has done to my soul, there shall be great love to share.
Where has the time gone? To a place where I have hope that, someday soon, love and affirmation will finally cover over the dark pools of pain.
Copyright 2017
