Objectivity and reality

Objective reality can be painful, or a saving grace. I can sometimes boil down my daughter's death to one purely objective sentence--she's gone, and there's no bringing her back. But sometimes, objective reality can be ridiculously unrealistic. She's gone, and I want her back. And then my mind goes to all the things I could do to get her back. I just need to go back in time and prevent the accident, or I need to just talk to the right person who can tell me where she is, or something...

Reality seems to shift a lot these days. I'll be driving somewhere and suddenly find myself back in that horrible day, those horrible first hours without her. When that happens, I get upset in ways I didn't on the actual day. I went into shock, and didn't cry, didn't scream, until I had to go to the funeral home a few days later. When I flash back to that day, I cry and scream like I would have. I'm reliving the incidents without the benefit of the shock.

When I first realized my daughter was gone, the only thing I could think was that it would get easier to be without her as time went on. That was because initially, I kept thinking, "She was just here, how can she be gone?" Now, I think, "I haven't seen her for 10 months, she's really gone."

It's not peace, nor serenity, but reality, I suppose.