Death goes on

'"Life goes on. What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't...dead now and will be dead tomorrow and next year and forever. There's no end to that. But perhaps there's an end to the sorrow of it. Sorrow has rushed over the world like the waters of the Deluge, and it will take time to recede. But already, there are small islands of--hope? Happiness? Something like them, at any rate.'

I just finished reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It's a nice little book, nothing I'm overly excited about, but the passage above really caught my eye. It describes exactly how I feel. I believe in an earlier post, I mentioned that losing my daughter is like being on one path, and then suddenly being dropped off a cliff onto other. There's no way to climb back to my previous path, I can't turn around, and don't know where I'm going. I've had to let go off what I had already seen on that path (to some extent) and what I thought I would see as I kept walking.

I do think the waters have receded a bit. I remember telling a friend in those days between my daughter's death and the memorial that while sadness overshadows everything, it doesn't mean that the good things aren't good. My baby girl's first time rolling over, the first time she said Mama, all of it is still so good. I only wish her big sister could be here to see it all too.

Early on, I remember a few people using the word "heal." I considered that word for a long time. Other people said "move on" but I knew that wasn't right. Move forward was somewhat better, but both reminds me of the idea that "life goes on." Healing means that you get better. You're never exactly as you were before.

I have scars and stretch marks from my two pregnancies and c-sections. Most people have never seen them and never will. Just as most people never met my daughter and never will. Is that healing? A slight amoung of sadness that exists as some sort of physical manifestation that I can live with. That's how I think of it for now. The scar is still not formed--I still have open wounds, raw emotion, and it can all be irritated at any time, by the oddest of things.

Still working on healing. Death goes on, hopefully eventually the waters DO recede.