See You With My Heart

Abby's Candle

___________________

There was a moment when life was just life,
 and death was a stranger I knew nothing about.

There was a fragment when ordinary was just ordinary,

and it was filled with everyday traditional normal things.

There was a glimpse when laughter was simple laughter,
and not laughter tainted with sorrow and loss.

Death was something far away and distant and not real,
something that happened to people on t.v. shows,
or in movies.
Other people.
Not me.
Not us.

_______________
When they ask me 
what I liked the best,
I'll tell them it was you.
~City of Angels

There was a minute when everything was right,
and then there was a second,
when it wasn't right anymore,
suddenly,
instantly,
forcefully,
at 9:55 in the evening,
on a Monday.

Exactly one year ago today.
Now I can no longer think...'this time last year we were'.... 
or say you died recently,
 or even a few months ago.
One year.
I don't feel ready to be in my second year of Grieving.
It's still all too soon, too raw, too unbelievable.

________________________

 Your love is gone,
 and you are no longer you. 

________________

All I've got is my longing and my begging for all the yesterdays 
and the times when I didn't know anything at all 
or care about posts such as this one. 
 I look to the sky and I wonder. 
I miss all the things that never were, 
and all the things that never will be. 
 But that sky is different to me now, 
than the sky I knew, 
the one before I knew death. 
I see it's darkness. 
I see it's light. 
I see it all. 
Now.
______________________

There will never be a time,
like the time I lived in,
before I knew too much,
about life,
to know
that it's not
just Life.

It is nothing. And everything.
It is the only thing that we have,
for sure.
The only thing that is right now.

I wish I didn't know
so much
about death.
But I do.
I do. 

______________________

Once several years back, another blogging friend lost their beloved cat.

She literally lost her mind.

Every day, every post was more emphatic.

Deeper pain.

Excruciating.

Gut wrenching.

Everyday I tried to say a kind and encouraging word.

But, I did not understand.
I thought I did, 
but I truly didn't.

__________________________

I have known loss. 
Loss of the very young infant to loss of an aged great-grandparent.

I have experienced job loss, pet loss, loss of a friendships, and losses of the heart.

I have had all the normal losses every single human at one time or another experiences.

But I have never had a loss that hit me
 so profoundly
so deep
so strong
 at my core. 

____________________

So when I think back to my blogging friend,
the one who was hurt so deeply

by a loss of 20+ year old cat.
 I didn't know

or understand how it could affect her so profoundly.

I thought I was compassionate.
I thought I was understanding to her pain.

But I didn't understand.

I do now.

No one knows or understands some things until we have experienced them ourselves.
 I know how hard it is to read the about someone's grief.

I know that at some point it's like you need to get on with LIFE.

But grief of great depth is not like that.

There is no getting on with it.

What there is is learning to
 absorb it,
 incorporate it
 and live with it.

It's a wall you live right up against, every single day.

My sincere hope is that no one should experience a loss this great,
 but I suspect most of us at some point in our lives will.

The only thing I encourage is that you not be like me.

Don't think because someone is hurting so bad that they can just "do something"
 to propel themselves to be OK.  
It's not like that.

Not at all.
And I will tell you this.
A kind word. A true heartfelt thought will help that anguish. 
Knowing that someone understands the pain can mean the
 difference in being able to go through that moment.
We live in a broken world.
Anyone can offer moments of encouragement, hope and beauty to others.
Acts of kindness can change people's lives even if one does not see the transformation.
Sometimes you cannot know the misery hidden in someone's heart.
But a genuine compassion can help begin healing the brokenness.

Cape Cod

_____________________

A thought dawned slowly in my mind,
since I live in a Coastal area Grief became to me like beach evolution.

Beaches are dynamic, living breathing landscapes, and the prime example of beach evolution is the coastal barrier. These strips of land are usually long and narrow, and run parallel to the mainland. Sometimes they are islands and other times they are connected to land at one end. Scientists estimate that there are more than 2,100 barriers fronting nearly 10 percent of the world’s continental shorelines.
These sandy barriers are constantly raised up, shifted, and torn down by the natural ebb and flow of waves, currents, winds, and tides. Hooks form, inlets open and close, and beaches slowly march across their back bays and lagoons toward the mainland. This process allows them to naturally move ever upwards as sea levels rise.
On the southeastern elbow of Cape Cod where the New England coast reaches out into the cold and choppy North Atlantic, this natural progression has been taking place in full view of satellites for more than 30 years. The images of Cope Cod above were acquired by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8  and the Thematic Mapper on Landsat 5. They show the shape of the coast off of Chatham, Massachusetts, on June 12, 1984, and July 30, 2013.

That is Grief summed up for me. 
Time and the ocean pound away at the land,
 moving the sand from one coastline to the other, 
just as grief morphs and changes, 
a grain of sand at a time until it too looks very different over a long period of time. 
The shoreline, 
like grief is always there,
 but different worn away by the pounding.

 365 days ago at 9:55 PM my life changed.

Forever.

Although  it may seem unthinkable that I could be so deep in mourning over a cat.

For me she wasn't simply a cat.

She was my best and most loyal loving friend.

I may have only had her on loan for 8 years and 2 months,
 but it was our lifetime.

For the time I have remaining
 I will miss her deeply.

Shifting one grain of sand at a time. 
Until the coastline of my heart bears no resemblance to the one before August 12, 2013.

________________
There are no goodbyes for us.
Wherever you are,
you will always be in my heart.
~Gandhi