I dare not say "I'm back."
I don't even know where I've been. Writing in my head only again, for months, it's now so full of words I feared the explosion would take out a city block.
I feel fake and false sharing the days' small trials and triumphs, the trivia that pile up to assemble my life right now -- meals and homework and mountains of laundry and paperwork, attending to my children's mental and physical health -- when throughout flows this raging undercurrent of grief, still; ten months in.
Ten months.
More than enough time to gestate. And yet what do I have to show for it? This egg-like orb of nothingness that is the palpable absence of my mother, lodged under my chest; barely dissipated, still.
But I feel I cannot yet either wear my mourning on my writer's sleeve. Even though it suffuses everything subtly, the constant filter on my lens, as a topic it is gray wisps, ghostly vague, deadly dull.
I am well aware that to go on and on about missing my mother now will likely incite impassioned and compassionate admonitions to "look forward" and "move on" which will make me want to shank my well-meaning readers. Never a good place to be.
And Thanksgiving coming up.
Last year with my mother and uncle. This year without.
I almost can't look at the photos, the longing they engender so great, I fear the molecules of the screens upon which the images burn will burst apart from my desire to hold those people again against my actual body and not just in my metaphoric heart.
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| Mom and Uncle Walter, Thanksgiving 2012 |
So here I am.
Once again with all these little stories I want to tell, yet they remain untold.
I know it's okay to smile and laugh in the middle of grief, and I do, every day. I know that my mother, of all people in the world, would want me to enjoy each and every moment with my children with all my soul. And I do. Every day.
I hope the floodgates open soon (yet can make no promises).
Until then, here, now, is my one toe back in the water.
It feels good.
Even if it is just a pool of tears.
