The second wave of grief threatens to overcome me. I can feel the sand move beneath my feet. As it shifts, I become more fixed in place. I am watching the water move farther and farther away from me and in the distance I can see a tidal wave forming. It will come crashing down upon me. I'd like to move to higher ground, but my feet have sunk into the sand so deep that I cannot lift them. I am helpless. Only able to stare and wait for the second wave to come while gulls shriek above me.It's the holidays, I suppose, that pulls the water out to sea. Or the increasing isolation, as I become the only mother of only dead children I know. The pain of having no new stories is exhausting. Remembering has comforted me for four years and making meaning has aided as well. Reflection brings numbness now, rather than enlightenment. My feet sink deeper. The wave grows higher. The sky darker.
I want to talk and write about Caitlin and I don't. I'm stuck. Perhaps I should welcome this wave. It may take me out to sea. It may toss me toward new horizons.
Reflection brings numbness now, rather than enlightenment. This is the sentence of that I keep returning to. I think I know what you mean, I feel as though I am trying to make sense of something that is a nonsense? And I could sit and think about it until the end of time and be no further forward. And that's not to say that there is no sense and no meaning, just one that I will never, ever be able to grasp with my own limitations? Faced with that particular little conundrum who wouldn't go a bit numb.
ReplyDeleteI was going to say that I am sorry about the wave but then, perhaps this wave will be the one to carry you towards something new, some new land, some different place. I hope and trust that it is.
But I am sorry that your daughter, Caitlin, is not in your arms. I wish you had no need of waves to whisk you away to better or different places.