Time out of Mind
Time out of Mind
5-04-19
You have been gone four years today. This year I am not as out of my mind with grief, but honestly it hurts more.
Perhaps it’s because now I suppose you could say I am in my mind with grief, but no that’s not quite it, I am just more with the sorrow.
I”m not in shock so much anymore; the heaviness of the reality of it all is starting to settle even though sometimes I am still stunned in utter disbelief. I can't believe my mother is dead. I still can’t believe I had to choose to remove my mother from life support.
It hurts. I miss her. I miss my dad.
I can’t always wrap my mind around the fact that I lost both my parents only 3 months apart, so instead I try to wrap my heart around it.
I try to hold my heart tenderly as it aches, allowing the pain to wash over me. It’s taken me most of these four years to be able to acknowledge the grief, to greet it, to know it.
I still cry most days, sometimes just for a second - it often washes over me without warning - although now I don’t try to fight it, I just talk to her and allow the tears to fall. I speak my sadness to the skies and know the winds carry my words.
I miss you, Mommy. I love you.
I keep thinking my heart is shattered, that it’s in pieces, but….it’s not. My heart is whole, but broken.
And I think that’s where I have been getting stuck.
Yes, my heart is whole, I am whole, but my heart also hurts so much that I get caught up in that idea of it being damaged beyond repair - it’s not.
My heart is broken, but not broken in pieces……it’s broken open. And there is a difference between the two.
Yes, it fucking hurts. A lot.
It hurts in ways that often surprise me. But, in that hurt, in the aching….there is a softening. My understanding and practice of gratitude has deepened, evolved, grown. My gratitude practice is what saved me when I was drowning in the unimaginable grief of losing both my parents and is what continues to sustain me when it feels like I am barely holding on.
Oh Mommy, I wish I could tell you the things I know now, only after you are gone. I still speak them out loud to you; I think there’s a better chance of you hearing them now anyway.
I love you, I forgive you. I miss you.
Time out of Mind @ Andrea Sugar 2019