My
best friend's mother died and now we've both lost both parents. I'm watching
her go through the tunnel of loss. It's a helpless feeling, and yet I can look
her in the eye. People often call you brave when you're in the tunnel, as if
you had a choice.
The day my dad died was the strangest day of my life. He
was the first major death in my life and it broke me. I was only 29. When I
lost my mom she hovered over me for a year like a cloud. Now I’ve lost my
brother—my gifted, frustrating, inspiring, angry and passionate brother.
Loss is strange and isolating and surreal, like living in a
dream. There is no longer any purpose to your day. You don’t walk—you wander. Your
brain is not on the same page as reality. You’re inside an Escher drawing or a
Matrix; as if you are nothing more than an image, walking and talking as you
are expected or instructed or manipulated. You have the job of rising each day
and going through it. And it really does feel as if you could jump off a
building and live.
As time goes on reality creeps slowly back and the pain begins. Every day you wake to a muffled scream in your stomach. Everywhere are reminders that your life is forever changed and your throat burns with the denial. Tears load up but don’t spill. And you want to cry because it keeps them close. You find yourself clinging to the grief because you’re clinging to them. Before you can finally let go you wonder if it is at all possible to survive.
