I can’t explain it. I can’t tell you what this is like. I have tried for over a year and I am failing.
I can’t tell you that when the other kids playing at the park start talking about “daddy” and my son chimes in that his “daddy works, too, in heaven” how part of my heart tears wishing he didn’t have to talk about a place so difficult to conceive and how I would give every limb attached to my body for him to still hear his daddy whistle when coming home from work.
I can’t find words to describe what happens to me internally when both of my kids are screaming and begging for attention and nothing I do seems to appease or help or console and in the midst of the flurry of emotion, I would love to sit down in the heap and cry with them but I know that I am expected to hold us together and find some type of answer out of this mess.
I can’t give you the right description of what it is like to be in the middle of one activity, look up and realize, our family went from four to three in the matter of an instant or as I learned in court in the matter or six tenths of a second.
Should I share with you the story from yesterday when a cashier glanced at my wedding band and told my children that daddy would be pleased with the new shoes we had picked out and I didn’t want to correct her because I want my children to always feel like their daddy will be pleased. And then I spent the rest of the afternoon wondering if I should take off this ring I wear.
Maybe I could brag and tell you that Madelynn loves me so much that she hangs her arms around my shoulders allowing me to drag her in mid-air trusting that I will never let go. I love to hang on and feel her kiss my cheek with her lips tightened in a strait line for dramatic effect. And then she giggles and she giggles so long that a dimple appears and it looks just like her dad’s. How do I tell you with words that I would sacrifice any one of the five senses of my body for her to have another chance to hang onto the neck of her father.
In and out. In and out all day long. This is what happens in and out all day long.
I can’t explain how I can feel so normal one minute, emptying the dishwasher, pleased with myself that I am actually mobile and productive, when all of a sudden I see a dish we bought together on our honeymoon and I am brought back in time through the vehicle of a trance and I smile that we were together and then with that same smile fading remember we are apart.
I don’t know what to call this. A cycle? A pattern? A phase of grief? A realization? A reality? A sick joke? A rude awakening? All I know to say is that this is unlike anything I have ever experienced. I can’t explain it.
