I haven’t been sleeping very well lately, and it’s starting to wear me down a bit. The upcoming 29th will signify that it’s been exactly a year since my mother passed away in Italy, and it leaves me rather emotional. On top of that, someone close by just lost her father a day ago, and getting to see the grief up close has opened up some of my own wounds, leaving me to wonder how much progress I actually made over the last year. Less than expected, obviously. I find myself chasing down the sorrow, trying to confront it in order to deal with it and get it out of my way, rather than let it live on the periphery of my consciousness, waiting of a moment to ambush me when I least expect it. It creeps up on me in the morning, in that fraction of a second between me waking up and me opening my eyes and getting out of bed. That moment right before I remember that my mother and father are dead. And so I chase it, listening to their favourite music, eating their favourite meals, doing the things they liked doing, just to feel close to them. I don’t need to look far to achieve that for either; I need to just look in the mirror to feel close to my father, and my mother was such a large part of my life that I can just close my eyes and be there, with her. Anywhere, really, but I go back to Italy with her, and I’m pushing her wheelchair up the hill. She’s suggesting that she can walk a little bit so as not to burden me, and I am sweating from the strain, smiling, and I decide to run a little faster and push a little harder. I go back to the hospital room where she passed away, where we’re sitting together in the dark singing the same childhood lullabies she sang to me when I was young, because it’s the only thing that I can think of that distracts her from her delirium induced panic. She can’t even form all the words she’s so frightened and confused, but she latches on to it, latches on to me, and we make it through another hour together.
See, there’s the beast. It’s not hard to chase it down. :`(
