Grief part 1

Beginning something, with words, feeling my way through the text.

I have had reluctant fingers, afraid that they won’t represent well, or afraid on an even more difficult sentiment, that I will get started and won’t be able to stop.

The emotions that I have been carrying around are a great sea trench. I have been floating over them, looking down and wondering to what depth the darkness goes.

I was afraid to take the plunge, to swim in them, in they mystery and depth.

But last Thursday, I had no choice.

A week has gone by since I got the news, via phone message, that sent me plummeting, iron weights on my feet, into that watery cavern.

The message from my uncle was that my father lay in the hospital with tubes in him, making his heart beat, breathing for him. He decided that methodone and alcohol would be the way to end his life, he decided that his body had betrayed him and that it was no longer worth living in.

I know he made that decision awhile ago, but last week he carried it out to a fatal end. Intentional? Unintentional? The answer to that will only be known to him. I can’t go there, the world of questions could make me crazy.

His decision did not surprise me, but the phone message shocked me, grief enveloped me, pulled me under. I was driving when I heard the message. It took all of my strength to turn my car around and be back where people would ground me. I couldn’t go home, Arno and the boys were out camping.

So I went back to the clinic where I was held as sobs wracked my body. I was taken home and fed and helped to figure out what to do.

If any of your read this…thank you. I couldn’t have gone at it alone.

I was stuck for a bit, figuring out how to deal with my father’s death alone. They had made the decision to take him off of life support and I wouldn’t be in Maui in time to say goodbye to his physical body.

So I did the only thing I could think of and that was to go to San Diego, to be with my older son, to connect with my father that way.

Arno joined me two days later, he had been out of cell phone range for two days. Not being with my guys was disorienting.