At the first year someone asked me what I've learned to which I answered "I'm making mistakes and I'm happy to make them". Yet there are so many more emotions I feel within every crevice in my body- I hurt in places I can't describe and cry within nooks of my soul I didn't know existed. Devastation and sadness ache as though a foreign person has taken hold of your being and will not release you; even if you cry "uncle" this stranger has taken the air you breathe and polluted it with such emotional poison that you fear you will never breathe again. But you will as much as you don't believe it.
People who love you make room for your presence and your grief. They silently move with you and embrace you for hugs, for quiet, for joy and for prayer.
My mom came over one morning as I sobbed into the phone that I don't want to live, I don't want to get out of bed and I just want to be with Charley. She quickly drove over, violently opened the front door and rushed to my bed where I my face wept into a drenched pillow and my sight was black in color. She made space for me to cry and held me while I did so, she said nothing and allowed me to unload all my fear, all my love and all my pissed off anger. On many, many, MANY days I wanted nothing more than to lose myself and just disappear only to re-appear in the arms of my brother and with his smile reflected in mine.
I have learned that life is much more valuable than I once thought it is. I wake up everyday with a different mindset wanting to LIVE and live forthright, live with the intention of living and swatting away anything and anyone who prevents me from reverting back to how I once lived and loved.
Although I thought I loved hard in the past, I am now open to loving most everyone, I'm mom-ish in my ways and hold my daughter with such intent that I know she feels the depth of my present and her future with me. I bask in her face and her delight. Her words are invoking and affect me so deeply that I can't fathom leaving this life and leaving her behind, nor can I imagine her life without me in it. I'm grateful for her existence and thank God for the blessing of her life as I thank my brother for experiencing every moment I have with her from behind the curtain. My brother is backstage with us at every waking moment and is seeded so deeply in everything we do.
My void is everlasting and will never be filled- this I know. I know that my soul won't be at peace until I reunite with my brother and we smile at one another, and embrace and are entwined once again. I know that I get lost in my void and insist that I can't climb out of it----but I do and when I do, I choose to make the most out of the smallest moments and try not to be deterred by life's inconveniences.
I have learned that there is no permanency is this human world except for love. True love never dies nor does it's extension called connection. I have learned that we never know the inner-workings of a job, or a friend, or a family member, or God's plan so I live as though I may die within hours. Call me jaded, call me pessimistic or call me life-induced---if it's not love, then it just is.
I beg my brother to come back but I know that he won't. So you know what I do in his place?
I live.
