Wednesday, November 21, 2012

I am Thankful

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Left to right: Nico and Christopher 

November 22nd, 2012, Happy Thanksgiving

The American holiday Thanksgiving (and a few other countries as well) is upon us. A day that was once celebrated by prayer, fasting or a great feast to celebrate a good harvest has now turned into a meal that brings everyone together so that we can enjoy the company of family and friends who we rarely get to see.

Many people celebrate Thanksgiving by reflecting on the year that has gone by too quick. They talk about being thankful for good health and happy for what they have obtained throughout their lives. But for some it's just another reminder of an emptiness within our heart.

For me and others, who lost loved ones this year, these first holidays without them are the most difficult. And the years that follow after this year will never get 100 percent better. For most, Thanksgiving is the first true family holiday where you realize you are alone because most people at the house your visiting to eat a thankful meal don't think about it anymore.  Or the sadness you still harbor continues to lingers and your family and friends don't understand the continued grief. Others people have simply moved on and don't realize that Thanksgiving will never be the same for you. So, in the midst of their ignorance to your emptiness, you just smile and laugh but deep down you know it's just not the same.

The food will always taste a little bit different. The wine and spirits will become more comforting and the prayer more meaningful as we discover that old traditions died with the passing of the ones we loved. Now, like the pilgrims before us, we seek new territory to find new meaning in life's silver lining before we finish the glass of wine that is half full. 

They say time and distance will heal the loss of losing your loved ones. And that your emotional wounds will close, mending the fences of heartache that escaped from your chest cavity, so that the rejuvenated lining will trap love in and in time that love can rebuild the inner walls of your heart. But as the hole closes the blood that flooded out of your body through your tears and emotional distress still has not returned to fill the voids in your ailing heart. 

Death continues to sting you. The pain of the past years loss breaks your spirit like a crashing waterfall on the rocks below, as your soul gasps for its life blood. You can only hope that those memories will later stop stinging the brain and start stimulating your will to get better, and bring you peace in your time of darkness. 

But the reality is when the wind gets knocked out of you, like a death punch that strikes you, you are so weak kneed you can only wish to stand on your own two feet again. Hoping that that wish will be granted and the genie can point to the good and reasoning for all this sadness.

The fall to your knees blinded you because the blood escapes your brain and drains from your broken heart and the darkness that shrouds your mind leaves everything else around you irrelevant. You reach out for a hand but your out of breath and are too weak to extend it far enough for help.

As the wind escapes your diaphragm. The weight of death throws your torso to the ground while the rest of your body is bent at the knees. You’re too weak to sit up so you just flatten yourself out and lay there. Your face has its lips to the ground as the heavy breathing pushes the dirt and small pieces of rock outwards. The asphalt acts as a barrier to your  breath and pushes your moist air back at your facial skin as you lie there like a fish out of water. 

All the possible areas that your body can store air is open and escaping into the atmosphere. You gasp for the little oxygen that is remaining, trying to force it back into your body to eliminate the feeling of drowning. You then have to choose to either lay there and die or fight to regain yourself so that you can live again. The goal is to stand like so many before you and march on. This is your moment, but it doesn't have to be done all at once.

In this first year of loss its okay to lay there, however you just can’t let the moment pass you by when it arrives. You have to attach yourself to whatever good is leftover in the destruction in your heart. For me it was my two beautiful boys that I grabbed onto and who helped me up, and yet, they are too young to realize that now and to little to know how important they are for me. That I may be raising them in this time of their life, but they raised me in my time of need. 

As I breathe again, I am thankful for them in my life. 

They are my life blood that pushes me forward, when I’d rather not move and I am thankful they have the wheels to move me. They are the air in my lungs that refreshes me and I am thankful they have the oxygen to supply me. My wife gave me these two gifts of life and I am forever thankful for that because their presence restores my vitality and I am thankful everyday that they provide the spark that I need to start my day. Their laughter is rushing back into my lungs, inflating my crushed heart with loving air and I am thankful for the time I have with them. They are here with me this Thanksgiving holiday and I am thankful.  God, I am thankful. I am thankful. I am thankful.








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The Adventures of Captain Imperfecto/Born Again by Christopher P. Fusaro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Based on a work at christopherfusaro.blogspot.com.

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