Today, I Choose Love

In a moment everything changes.  Life ends and hearts break. Somehow we have to figure out how to go on.

Grief and fear walk with my every step. Sorrow so deep there are no words.  A piece of my heart has died and I want to curl up and die too. 

From sobbing and retching, I've moved on to sleeping and numbness.  And fear.  Overwhelming fear.  Fear of losing another loved one.  Worry over my children. Fear of driving in the snow. Fear of that truck heading towards me. Death lurks around every corner.  I'd like to stay safe in my bed with my head under the blankets.

Laughing with my children feels like a betrayal of the boy who will never laugh again. Singing to the music he will never again listen to feels wrong.  Living, in the face of his death, seems impossible.

The temperature outside plummets to match the frozen numbness that surrounds my heart. How can life go on inside or outside? Is it possible to survive this? Do I even want to try?

I say it over and over again, quoting Emmanuel. Hold fear in one hand. Hold love in the other. Holding both, choose love and choose love again. 

Facing a fear, a loss and a sorrow greater than anything I've ever known, I have to choose.  I'm holding tight to fear, worried that letting go of my sorrow means I didn't love enough. Yet the memory of love pulses in my heart with every beat.

I loved him. More than life itself. I would have died for him. If I could have eased his path or made him happy I would have done anything.  Yet it is only in death that he has found peace. How can I deny myself that which I wished for him?

I wanted him to find peace, love and joy. I wanted him to laugh. I wanted him to feel loved.  I have to believe that he's found that in the afterlife and that he would want those things for me too.

So today, I hold fear in one hand.  I hold love in the other. Holding both I choose love. 

Today I choose to laugh with my friends.  I choose to move my body, swimming, skating, dancing. I choose to turn the music up loud and sing along. I choose to eat chocolate and cheesecake. I choose to play with my puppy, sing to my littles and kiss my guy.

Today I choose to live and love and laugh out loud because the adventure is always worth it. And really as Natalie Babbitt said "Do not fear death, but rather the unlived life. You don't have to live forever. You just have to live."

Today I Wait in Vain

I hear footsteps on the stairs and I look up, expecting to see him.

He's not there.

I start to back my car out of the driveway and I glance back, expecting to see a little red car.

He's not there.

I pull his clean socks out the laundry basket but he's not there to give them to.

I find his Toaster Strudels in the freezer but he's not there to eat them.

I scroll through Facebook and find a post that reminds me of him but he wasn't the one to share it.

He doesn't come home and tell me about his day.

He doesn't feed the cats every night. 

He's doesn't ask me for a hug.

He's not there to start an argument with his siblings.

He's not there to look at me like I'm an idiot.

He's not there to tell me all the things that I didn't know I didn't know.

There's an empty space, a gaping, yawning emptiness that nothing can fill. It's inside me and all around me.

It doesn't seem real to me. How can it be that he's not there.

I'm waiting for him to come home.

I'm waiting for him to wrap his arms around me once more.

I'm waiting to hear his voice.

I'm waiting for him to fill the emptiness.

I'm waiting, in vain.