When someone you love dies, time stops. It’s like standing still while watching the whole world move around you. You can’t tell if you’re still breathing and have to remind yourself to do so because it feels like all the air has been stolen from the room. Your heart is broken and you are unable to describe the hole that seems to have just punched through the other side of this dimension into your life. Somehow the world keeps moving. People expect you to still function and carry out daily routines and duties because they don’t know there’s been a sudden rip in your space/time continuum. The world somehow keeps turning completely unaware that it has just lost an enormous part of humanity. This is a cornerstone of your world. A piece of the foundation that you were built on. An essential element that makes up your composition and without it you wouldn’t be quite who you are. And now it’s gone. While you’re happy that you’re loved one can rejoice in a better place and reunite with the source, you are at a complete loss back on earth as to what step to take next. Without that solid piece of foundation, everything starts to lose balance. This indescribable hole seems to feel like a vortex in the pit of your stomach and fear and uncertainty begin to seep in. It’s like listening to an old happy 40’s song and everything is fine until this sudden happenstance occurs and the music echos away into oblivion. And then there is what can only be described as a deafening silence that makes your ears ring and a black void take the place of what was moments before, life. Like a machine that has simultaneously switched to auto-pilot, your light is on but nobody is home. You are out of your body watching yourself converse with people and performing duties lost in a trance like state that keeps you suspended just far enough from the moment to keep a calm demeanor. There is still no air in the room and you are trapped in the space that comes after and exhale that waits patiently for the inhale that seems to be taking it’s time in gracing you with its presence. You get in the shower and the air returns, only to be crushed away by a tidal wave of emotion that hits you so hard out of nowhere it feels as though it may crush your very existence. Now you want to breathe, but are unable to, due to the fact that you are now drowning underneath a sea of emotion that seems to be in unending turmoil. Every time you think you’ve made your way to the surface to gasp for air, another wave comes crashing down and takes you back under for more. You decide to stop fighting the waves for the moment and surrender to depths. You float there, sobbing under crushing currents in the stillness that only a moment ago you were fighting. You feel peace here. Maybe you’ll hide here under the current and raging storm above and let yourself submit to the stillness of tears that now surround you and seem to be holding you suspended in time and space.
You decide to stay here for the time being. It is warm here and it feels so much better to just float under the crushing oblivion waiting for you imminent return above. You can here the echo of your heart wrenching sobs, but at least it is still down here. These tears feel like a blanket enveloping you so lovingly that you think, maybe you’ll just stay here. There is no real reason to surface and deal with the perfect storm that rages above you. You can already feel the dull, searing pain in your head, inflicted by your unsuccessful attempts to fight your way through the squall unleashing its fury above. You want to stay where it is safe and warm and still. But somewhere a voice in the back of your dull, aching consciousness, reminds you that you cannot stay here. You have merely granted yourself respite for a moment and soon must return.
You spread your arms and kick your legs pushing your way back into to surface. The exhale in your ears as you reach the top is so loud it feels as though you have been hit with another wave. Only to be immediately replaced with loss of air and blank void silence as you open your eyes once more and dry off. You feel sick. Your head is pulsating as though it’s in a vice grip and your stomach was consequently churned by the waves you just fought your way past. You long for the stillness. You emerge and do your best to pull yourself together so that you don’t look like a freak show to the people who will be coming now. A show of pulling yourself together freshly dressed and clean. You realize how dark this oblivion really is. You need light. You need warmth and comfort. You open every blind in the house to let the love, light and warmth back in. Suddenly a loving and familiar voice calls you out of your delirium. It comes in love and peace. It is not here to gawk or catch a glimpse of your storm. It is sent here to help calm it. If only for the time being. The air is back. It is thin and takes great pains sweeping into your lungs but it is back. You feel relief, and the waters and storm seem to calm almost immediately. Help is here. Everything is going to be okay for now. You listen and speak in somewhat mechanic fashion and focus yourself on tasks that you are being asked to complete. No one knows. They have no idea and you have been raging in the storm for the better part of an hour. You feel afraid. You do not want to bring the storm back and you certainly do not want to deal with anyone else’s storm. Luckily you are given instructions and all is well. You do not have to deal with that again just yet.
Now people know. Which makes you uncomfortable. You feel like a sideshow and wish you could return to the stillness. It isn’t anyone’s fault you feel this way. You just do. And would much rather be alone or withdraw to gather yourself and induce some stillness. But right now there isn’t time and you must carry on, intrepid. Other than the messages of love and prayers, there are questions about how you are doing or what you are feeling. You have no idea. And you can barely describe it to one person who actually gets it. Everyone else means well and tells you that if you need anything to let them know. Knowing full well this is not how you work and that you are a withdrawn introvert, they say it anyway because they don’t know what else to say. And you respond mechanically and thank them. You are thankful that people do care. And yet you still feel like you are on a stage naked for the world to see or that everyone is taking pity on you or judging your storm. Like watching yourself fighting through the waves and not letting anyone in a boat close enough to help for fear they will just laugh at you and dump you back into the depths. Your storm keeps them at bay. The closer ones in the boats understand. But you have to ride this one out on your own.
You still wish for stillness. You cook. You distract yourself from the chaos within and the pain on the outside. The voice you needed to hear most calls on the phone. And even though it seemed mechanical and uncomfortable, it gave you comfort in a way that no other could. Like a hand in the dark that you trust. It has a hard time showing it, but its there, and regardless, makes you feel safe again even when issuing instructions to its tinier twin, who looks up at you and smiles it’s love and knowing. You have been sent a flotation device of love by those closest to you and for now you can ride the wave. Finally they are here to take the body in its final form to the place where all bodies go when the breath of life is no longer present in them. You are not afraid of this part. You lovingly wrap a cornerstone of your being in a white sheet and are determined to let him have his dignity. After all it’s the least you can do to show respect to someone who has meant so much and done so much for you. And you feel a swell rise up in your chest when you help carry the vessel that housed such an amazing soul into the last ride it will ever take. And you feel what you think is proud, that it was you that got to do it. Because you were the one there. When you attempt to describe the feeling in your chest, your loved one explains this feeling is HONOR. To be so unattached your whole life to almost everyone, is to not really have experienced this feeling. You do not respect many people, but you respected this man. And so in helping to keep his dignity, you felt honored. This makes your heart start to glow again. And then when it’s all over you just want to collapse on your bed and let the pain and adrenaline subside. But you can’t. There are things to be done. And people to call. Thank goodness she is not ready for that and knows you don’t want to. You bake.
Today is also a birthday. And the soul that resided in the now absent vessel would want you to make sure she celebrated it. And it returns you to a slight stillness to do this. Some people still don’t know. That is okay for now it will happen when the time is right. You continue to respond to all the love and prayers being sent your way. With a few hiccups you manage to do the best you can. Now everyone knows at least and you can continue to try to ride the waves. You want to desperately shoot your gun to help pierce through that inexplicable void of sound around you. You still hear everything that is going on, but the void inside has a silence so loud it feels like it’s eating your insides. It even growls in anger at the situation which you are forced to be in. You want it to stop. You wish the others would come home soon. This is not your element. Somewhere inside you are screaming now and just need release. But the growl subsides when the others get home. Because they feel like you do and understand. They have been fighting the waves and storm all day on their own too. And they want the same things as you. Stillness. Piercing the void. And some joy to burn out the pain. Which is granted finally. To all of you through a series of serendipitous events. They are scared and lost too. But you comfort each other in the fact that you will be sharing the load as best you can. You cannot ever fill the void left by such an amazing soul. But knowing that someone else feels what you do and is there to help lighten the weight of crushing loss is the stillness you’d been wishing for all day. And you have a chance to be happy that another soul has made it’s journey back into communion with the source. You know that you can be thankful they are where they need to be. And that someday you will no longer be crushed by waves of cataclysmic emotion. You will no longer have to feel dull, searing pain. Or voids of oblivion that attract fear and unknowing. One day you will go home too. But for now it’s best to just grab a surf board and catch the waves as best you can.
mylifewithzoe 