I have touched upon the complexities of grieving a person that is still alive, but I felt a whole blog was necessary to devote to it.....to its true depth and challenges.........In death there is an end to it......a place to close the door and to truly move on.....no other way when a loved one dies.....however when you are suddenly thrust into being forced to grieve the loss of somebody that is living.......on a random Thursday night........somebody you can't get away from due to your children.....a person that you still loved so deeply up until recently.......and maybe still love to some degree......... it becomes enormously complicated in the biggest of ways.....especially as you see them transform into a person you don't recognize.....and you lose access to who they are in all the ways you once had access......and as they slip away all you can do is stand there and watch.....as if they are drowning and you are being prevented from offering the life raft that you are holding in your hands......standing there with the rope in your hand, but your hands are tied behind your back, and there is no longer a way to throw that rope, to save him.......because that is the point really.......there is no saving this time.......no soft place to land......no way to offer your means of rescue, of saving......and as that realization comes to find you it feels so big......so foreign......so much of everything......and as the distance between you and the living person you have to grieve happens, the sadness becomes palpable......becomes embedded in all the places of your life.......because it is so disorienting to acclimate to your new place in this person's life......a life that you still need to have a place in.....a very real place in forever and ever........but where exactly? How exactly? In what way exactly? Not too many answers at the moment.....only questions.......endless questions....and endless complications......and the grief that comes is like no other grief I have ever experienced...............because the end is NOT FINAL......the person NOT GONE......all the things that have been left unsaid are still there....hanging in the air in between us.....each and every time......and the knowledge of the fact that maybe those words will always hang between us forever.....never get said in the ways they need to......just as if he were dead.....but he isn't which makes the lack of closure or finality maddening........... because having a living breathing person unable to provide the closure that one yearns for or wants from the dead, is a strange phenomena indeed......so as I continue to grieve a man that is very much alive......I will continue to make it up as I go along......not really knowing what I am doing, how I should be feeling.....if I am doing it right.....if I can endure it and its special kind of complicated.......if the pain will lessen even though he will always be in my life.......or will it go away some day fully.......and will we figure out the way to make the end more palatable?......more final....these are all questions for another day....but for now I grieve in the land of the living.....in a space that is strange and complicated, and I hold out hope for a day that makes more sense and finds me putting his love and his life behind me in a very real and tangible way.......I believe a day like that exists for us all...........
jperuso
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