Never quite there

I’m laying here staring at an empty crib…

This crib is almost an exact replica of the one that stands empty in the next room, only smaller, so as to fit in our room, next to our bed. I just keep staring at it, as if it is going to help me… as if it will explain what the hell is going on. It wont.

We went to a movie today. We debated this venture. Our small group got together to see the movie. We weren’t sure if I could handle it. Movies have the tendency to purposely push your emotional buttons and mine are so raw a sideways look can set me off. Ultimately Will left it up to me. I wanted to go… I wanted to be with our friends. I wanted some normal.

I don’t know that it was a bad idea but the choice certainly had some repercussions. A tsunami has been pulling water out into that endless ocean of pain for a while now. I knew it would be crashing soon. Soon was today, soon is now.

In the movie the main character visited two graves repeatedly. In the emotional climax the sight of the grave markers was more than I could handle. Crash. The roar of unbearable pain deafened me. My child is in the ground. For most people that was just an emotional scene, for most people the fact that a wife in the movie buried her husband and a child had his father torn from his life add richness to a plot that ties up in a pretty bow at the end. Not for me. For me the image of leaves covering a grave marker is all I can see.

MY life doesn’t tie up in a pretty bow. There is no nice resolution. My son is dead. There is a hole in my heart that will never be filled. I hurt. I hurt. I hurt.

I stare at one empty crib that waits for new life. It is empty in anticipation. Every. Single. Day. I pass a crib that is empty with loss. Representations of the duality that is my world.

Normal is so confusing. I live perpendicular to the world. I see green where you see purple and hear screams where you hear music. It is so hard to walk here, never quite there.

From under the waves, until next time…