Eighteen Years

I'm sitting here blank.  Foggy.  Like my heart lost its spark.  I know it's all temporary, it will gradually come back, my tears will fade, and more smiles will come in their place. 

No one is expected to grieve in 11 days.  My mind wants me to do things like clean up the house after being gone, get out the holiday stuff, but right now I can't make the moves to do it. 

I've grieved before. 

But never for my Mother.

I've lost friends.  Julie, Jen, Randy, to name a few.  Those losses were different.  I was sad.  Sad for their families, sad to think I'd never talk to them again, that we'd never eat cold food on breaks at work, watch our kids play together at the play ground or watch another Irish football game together.  Sad for all of the things they'd miss out on seeing with their own families. Sad. 

This isn't sadness.

This is more.

Now that the funeral preparation is done, the viewing is over, the sitting in the front row, staring at a closed casket has been moved from reality to a too recent memory...  I weep.

That chapter has closed.  The painful writing of the one to come has begun.  I'm unsure how long it will be.  Not wanting to write it. Wanting to wave the magical wand that we all wish we had, and fix it all.  

But that's not reality.

I'm in reality.

And it sucks.

So many things that I wish I could change.  So many hardships that were unspoken over so many years.  We all have a road to travel.  Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard.  But we push on.  We pushed on.  We pushed on for 18 more years.  Eighteen years.  I'm glad to have had all of them.  But it wasn't enough.