Spiral

And the spiral continues to descend. C.S. Lewis commented on the circular nature of his grief… to enter, exit and reenter the same seasons over and over. He said that his hope was that at least he was in a spiral, rather than a circle and maybe just maybe he could hope he was spiraling upward rather than down. I have no such hope. Maybe I am spiraling upward. Maybe I am climbing. If so I certainly can’t feel it. The climb might explain the sheer exhaustion though… I don’t know.

People are excited about the Olympics… I can’t gather the energy to care. What does it matter who wins a volleyball game? Great, you can throw yourself into the air and do crazy twisty things. Awesome, how nice for you.

People are gearing up for ‘back to school.’ There are pencils and notebooks and lunchboxes everywhere. Bright colors and signs assault my senses. My stomach turns with the realization: time marches on.

I was somewhat prepared for this. I knew somewhere in the foggy recesses of my mind that this was coming. Isaiah will be a 1^st grader soon. This should be exciting and fun. I should have one child entering is first ‘real’ grade and one entering his ‘terrible’ twos… I hate the normalcy. I’ve even thought about this year’s holidays. I already dread them. My stomach turns and churns with the impending pain. Hobby Lobby (the clerks here probably wonder why that crazy, lost looking lady comes in all the time, hardly ever buys anything then wonders out the doors as if she sees nothing) has their CHRISTMAS stuff out. Thanks HL. I really needed the reminder, already, in JULY.

But I hadn’t prepared myself for Halloween. Yesterday, after a particularly gut wrenching, stuck in one spot staring at a decorative panel emblazoned with a ‘D’ moment I wondered into BigLots. No, I don’t know why. I was running… I needed to move, to not be at my house surrounded by the agony so I just kept walking… meandering, seeing almost nothing. I turned a corner and there they were, the Halloween decorations. A sharp stab took my breath away. Halloween, O God, I hadn’t thought about Halloween. Pictures of Damon in his little cow costume flashed in front of my eyes. Carnivals and candy and laughter clawed at my mind. I stumbled out of the store, barely putting one foot in front of the other. This. Can’t. Be. Real.

The pain has evolved in the last few weeks. It’s hard for me to cry now. The tears still come, but they usually come in short shallow spurts before something inside me dams the gate. I thought that the days when the sobs never stopped, when screams involuntarily ripped themselves from my throat and I could barely move from my bed… I thought those days were the worst. Maybe they were… maybe this place of steady agony only seems worse because I’m in the middle of it but I don’t think so.

I can function now, through the constant pain, through the images of my son that play on my internal movie screen. I can smile and converse and accomplish things, most days, but the loss is so much worse. The pain is so much more. The missing… oh the missing. The confusion swallows me, the questions assault me and I live in agony.

I read somewhere that Lions are known to lick the skin off of their prey before eating them. I don’t know if this is true. As a biologist I should probably check my facts… don’t really give a filp because this is how I feel. I’m being devoured and I have to live through every single barbed swipe of the cats tongue. I was not lucky enough to die upon my fall into the lion’s den, or to be ripped to shreds by the hungry cats… no they are taking their time with me. Death would have been so much better.

Damon, how I miss you.