Family photo 2013

Family photo 2013

Sunday, October 05, 2014

All the Big Feelings

They well up, bubbling just beneath the surface, rising, rising, rising to the brim, spilling out, splattering and splashing, erupting hot, heavy emotion all over everywhere.

They are all the big feelings.

The ones I harbor over the experience of years spent in unfulfilled longing. The awareness that ultimate acceptance is the only healthy and wise option set before me. The moments spent wishing I could grab hold of it once and for all to never let go. Though my countenance is brighter and my days less laden with the weight of sorrow, there are triggers lurking in all the corners of an ordinary hour. They take me by surprise causing my heart to lurch. I glance over at the car idling beside me during a red light. There is a mother in the back seat next to a baby in a rear facing car seat, stroking his face. I enter my online password for my bank account and the usual security question pops up, how many children do you have? I remember the weeks I spent thinking, hoping, expecting it would soon be one more. The man before me in line at Target buys diapers, tells me he has new twins. I smile, congratulations, blink the burning tears away, willing them not to leak out. A lump rises in my throat. A pit forms in my stomach. Again and again. It's not always forefront, but it seems I can not escape the clutches of grief entirely.

My darling Meadow buries her loss deep inside so she won't have to stare its too painful gravity in the face. Though it rears its head, finding other ways to seep through the cracks and spring forth, sprouting new thorny growth that must be plucked time and again. Deception is her ally, distance her objective. Guard your heart, she tells herself. Don't let anyone near. They will hurt you, leave you, destroy you. Her methods weary me, mock my relational efforts, tearing my labor to shreds. Will I ever be enough to earn her trust? Will she ever unlock the chains around her heart, freeing herself to love? I wish there was a way I could do it for her.

My dear husband, over run with the work that must be done, the brevity of hours in a day, the fatigue that inevitably sets in, the perpetual elusiveness of the final check mark of completeness. The to do list nags long and winding. It won't grow still. At home, at work, at home at work at home at work, the labor is ever there. Waiting. Demanding. Expecting performance. Requiring accomplishment only to begin again on The Next Thing. People are counting on him. Always looking to him for answers, leadership, guidance, progress, achievement, monetary gain. Where a large family resides the quiet respite that refuels the body and replenishes the soul is hard to find.

Our Flint flails beneath the cumbersome tether of school work he faces. It proves more difficult than he is able. He struggles to keep pace. He notices his classmates advancing. His mind won't cooperate with his desire to catch their stride.

Decisions about how to proceed in all the vast and varied aspects involved in this life we have forged together insist on our focus. Where do we go from here? How shall we ease, bear up under, carry the weight of, accept, assuage the tension?

The big feelings arise. They expect, require, demand that our attention to turn all the way toward them, head on, toe to toe. They won't be over looked, glossed over, ignored. They must be engaged.

We are a family. A messy, burdened, loyal, busy, forgiving, flawed, disheveled collective unit of individual people making a go of this existence in unison.

Time and again it proves itself a tarnished tapestry of humanity woven together in love - breathtaking in its tenderly faithful, heart wrenching and otherworldly beauty.


Photo credit: Karin Winter Photography

1 comment:

maggie k said...

This may sound strange since your blog is about your loss but I really like your writing. This post reads like a poem to me. Just a lovely way to express your deep loss. Thank you for sharing this and my condolences on your loss.

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