Finding the Cure of Mourning the Loss of a Loved One

May 26th, 2012

No two people grieve the same, I think. It's been a few months now since our loss. Every time I think I am getting better, I fail. I just need a cure.

I still wonder if this is how it is with everyone who mourns. The ups and downs of feeling good about yourself. You can go a week or so and feel your pulling through the darkness, and then fall right on your ass, twisting your body and laying flat on your damn face. It's grueling. You feel like you're living in an enduring black hole. The good weeks feel like a tease. An appetizer before the sorrow is served.

I'm going through the motions of life day in and day out, but the only difference is that my daily routine is not my choosing. It is my necessity. No matter how I feel, my boys need me. Some mornings, I wake up to a vibration in my head, rattling the oxygen right out of my brain, cutting off my blood supply, and a lightheadedness kicks in. Even though I feel lightheaded, my head bobbles around like the world's weight is shifting from right to left and then back again inside it. But I ignore it. I use the surrounding furniture to hold myself up as the dizziness tries to take me down. It must be the heartache I feel daily when I look at my boys.

I imagine she is on a long vacation to cope with the heartache. I say, "Well if she was in prison, she couldn't see the boys." But even prison would be wishful thinking. The ironic thing is I am the one in prison. I'm trapped in this labyrinth, unable to choose the right path to follow to make my escape from the deep corridors inside myself. I'm in solitary confinement, a box, attempting to break out.

The need to heal is imperative, and I know I have to try, but It feels as if I am an addict of some kind, an addict of self-pity. If you talk to any junkie or alcoholic in their great moment of clarity, they will tell you to your face, "I need to stop this shit; I need to get better. I am tired of living this way." But those moments give way to their demons, and the habits they formed are now ingrained in the fibers of their bodies. Their habits eventually return to them with a vengeance. It causes them to relapse into total destruction of their heart, body, and mind. My self-pity hasn't reached those levels.

I'm not even close to being a junkie. I have never even tried a drug. Not even marijuana. Not to say I am the Sandra Dee of society. The reality is the only time I came close to even smoking was with a hot blonde who was the classic, 5 foot 7 inch, blue eyes, and one-hundred and fifteen pounds. I was sixteen at the time. Her mom called to her from the front porch to their house as we walked in her cow pasture to come home the moment we were going to light it up.

My drug is ingrained into a larger organism besides my body. The roots extend beyond my fibers, beyond me, and intertwine into my children. Grief is my drug, like the largest organism on the planet, the Aspen tree. But it goes beyond land into the oceans, stretching like the great barrier reef. My grief is real; it's alive. If there was a way I could attach myself to another large organism like the Blue Whale as it passes by to get the grief process flowing and out of my body, I would. Those are the moments I long for.

Yet, I always allow those moments to pass me by.

Moments are presented to us all the time. Most of us will seize them. Other times, you are forced into situations that don't define you. You're not special for it; you must do it to survive. You can try to hide from the issue at hand, but the moment you peer out from under your covers, you'll see it staring back at you. It wasn't looking for you. It was there the whole time.

Reflecting on what has transpired over the months. I can directly see how it has affected me and my ability to cope. The strength in me has been challenged beyond anything that I can fathom. Life isn't easy, and mine has never been, but I am trying to work through this now. Like any reasonable person would. But reflection causes overwhelming pain. A pain that I wish would disappear with a reappearance of the soul that went to heaven, but knowing full well that is something that will never be. The pain of that reality unearths many more emotions.

I feel shocked.

The shock still hasn't gone away. Everything I have ever known and everything we built together is still here. Not just the children but her things. Her signatures. Mail in her name. Dirty laundry with her essence still on it. Body soap. The list goes on and on. How can this be? This can't be real. It isn't the denial of it; it's real and occurring. But how the fuck did this happen.

I am bewildered.

Is this really happening to me? Me? How the hell can this be happening to me. I am a good person. I haven't received any good fortune that would warrant payback. No deals with the devil were ever made. I have searched for anything I have done, but nothing seems that bad in my life to allow this to happen.

I feel regret.

Not saying the things I wanted to say. I should have expressed myself more. I long to say I love you. I thought deep down that I did the proper things as a husband, but then, there are things I did that make us all human. The bad overshadows all the good. I can not see one damn thing, one once, of sound that I provided, yet I know it's there. The bad blocks it out, pounding on you relentlessly, blaming you for the loss.

I have anger.

What the hell is going on. I mean, really. WHAT THE FUCK, IS GOING ON WITH ALL THIS. My kids don't deserve it. They are the victims of what is going on. I have to put on a smile every day and pretend that everything is all right when it clearly isn't. Does that make me the father of the year? Hell no. It makes me a parent shielding my kids from the reality of life, and it pisses me off that I have to do that now.

I feel sorry for myself.

It isn't fair that I have to do this alone, alone in the sense that my partner is not here to help me raise these kids, and my immediate family has undoubtedly left me high and dry. And her family left me high and dry. I can receive all the help in the world from whoever the hell wants to help me do it, but it doesn't make up for the fact that, in the end, I am alone in this. My kids are alone in this. They are one accident away from being an orphan.

And Selfish.

What about my hopes and dreams? My plans, they are gone. Cast aside like trash. The things I really wanted to do will never come to fruition.

This whole situation is taking a heavy toll on me. It is an organism that reaches out and affects so many other people. I am on the front line, so it is impossible to see who it is affecting behind me when I am trying to save my own ass and focus on only what's in front of me.

But I am not naive, and I understand others are hurting for me, for themselves. People must realize that I am in the ring alone in this fight. I know what I have to do. I am grieving in my own way. I just need to find the cure for what ails me.

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