Hello Old Friend

"Hello old friend." Not my favorite Jim Kirklandism but some how "Government cheese is good" (author's note- you have to hear this quote in the voice in which it was delivered--think slow deep southern baritone) doesn't seem appropriate. "Hello old friend" is how I feel about this blog and about this life. I have missed both. It has been a long journey over the last several months. Life, once always precarious in my mind then renewed to a sense of safety, has again revealed itself to be a teetering thought. In a whirlwind, this summer and fall have been turned upside down. The loss has been shattering as an adult but overwhelming through the eyes of a mother and wife of a grief stricken child. Loss is something I know a little about. It isn't new to me, it has been here before. I have carried it, worked it, moved it and come out the other side. More than once I have been here. I have been the child, the supporter, the bystander and the confidant. I know this routine, why does it shake me.

I know the hospitals, the diagnosis, the anger, the assumptions, the realizations. I know the planning, the funeral homes, the casseroles and the friends. I am solid--rock solid. I know the plans, the times, the phone numbers, and the protocol. I can organize the un-organizable, I can put things in place, I can make sure everyone is taken care of. All of this is my protection. It keeps me occupied. It was working so well until the questions started to come. Why is it that the questions of a three year old can bring you to your knees? Why can't we see people that we love right now? Why aren't they here? When will we see them? Why can't we go live with them now and be here just the same? Why has my own firm foundation been shaken this time?

My grief has been taken down a peg and intensified with each question. The re-living of the losses long ago feels fresh again. We all know we are not invincible, we have known that since we were young. Somehow as a parent the need to be invincible for your child is overwhelming. You sit up a little straighter when you are feeling down and they walk in a room, you let them know you will be there for them when they need you and when they don't. The same holds true no matter how old you are and how old your parents are. You need each other.

I have been the child abandoned and my new found reassurance of fragility sends me into fits of worry over the hopefully long haul. I never want to leave my child. I am not sick and God willing won't be. I don't anticipate any grave events to befall my life, but that is just it, no one does. This new loss has taken me there. Taken me to the fear I never knew, made the loss real and at the same time viewable from the other side. How must the dying parent have felt at the loss of their child or their family? How selfish of me not to have seen it before.

I have become my usual nervous self during this time. Unable to feel the good surrounding me, saturated by the fear. Then it came as a wave tonight. Who am I worried about? Obviously not the child that I once was or the child that now exists or the spouse that would grieve. My obsessions of health, my nervous energy, my racing mind, my unproductive self are over. To miss the life you have, you have to live it and be present and I intend to start doing that today. So on that note, good by old friends, may your lives be an example to the dawn I see today.