Pieces of the Whole

I needed look back through previous writing, to focus on how we begin to shape free-writing into a cohesive whole.  Rather than go back through my grief writing passages, I re-read everything else: from the day we lost Nelle back in September, through becoming pregnant again, through losing Iris in February through today.  I pulled out a line or two from various posts.

How can I string this experience together?  How can I make the words “fit” into something that makes sense?  I thought about rearranging them into something more fluid but then decided that as written, in the order written, most accurately reflects the ups-and-downs of grieving.  They are small pieces of a larger story.

I feel like the pieces of my life are still scattered around me.

Hard for me also is realizing that the world is moving on.

I found myself reserved, refusing to allow myself to really feel joy.

I nearly broke later in the evening,

I didn’t know it was possible to physically feel emotional pain.

The burden of needing to pick up and to keep going.

Over the weekend, I also took a hard fall while out walking and I ripped off the band-aid – trying to give my wound some fresh air.

Assume that we are all trying to do the best we can.

I just let it hang as a great unknown.

I spiraled downhill in the afternoon, leaving me choking on the lump in my throat and finally spilling into a flood of tears by the evening.

We have been packing away the last outward remnants of our grief.

I was able to enjoy the fall foliage.

My mind kept slipping back to those horrible days

My pain is fresh.  Other people have pain.  And the world keeps moving.

So the universe needs to give me a giant arm of support and a giant shoulder to cry on while I pray for strength.

We said our goodbyes beneath the sheltering oak.

If I can climb out of this feeling of being underwater, where I cannot see or hear anything clearly, maybe I can put one foot in front of the other tomorrow.

I do not have the appropriate words for the place I’m in now.

I noticed tonight as I emerged from my bath that I no longer have that horrible weighted feeling that I have been carrying around.

I did break, past tense.  I’m like a vase that fell and cracked.

I am comfortable with my grief.

The future isn’t what I had imagined it would be.

I have survived the worst experience of my life.  Though I am forever changed by it.

Outside it is foggy, which is a symbolic reflection of how I feel; like I am in a fog.

I’m resentful of people who have not experienced such pain and cannot begin to understand.

It hit me hard, and unexpectedly.

I am trying to fill the spaces in my day, because it is in quiet moments that I feel the worst.

I hate saying their names aloud, but I cannot avoid it.

I find myself simultaneously compelled and paralyzed by the thought of writing.

I do not believe that this horrible, life-altering thing happened to us so that we could understand some deeper wisdom of the universe, or emotionally grow as human beings, or that we have been dealt this hand for some past wrong.

Please universe.  I need a break.

I suppose it is a somewhat natural reflection after being thrown up against tragedy to wonder about meaning.

Maybe in time I will be able to respect my body again.

The rain has stopped.  The ground has had enough; it can’t absorb any more.