Infect Me With Life

I collect pieces of people like I collect books-hoping to be inspired with a new wealth of knowledge or fill myself with the magic I know others have to offer. Their lives reflect much more motion and routine; absent-mindlessly going through their lives untouched and unscathed by deep sadness. I take as much as I can listening to the way they speak their words and the watch the speed of their eyes in quiet wish to be like them someday...or maybe never be like them- living life in robot fashion. 
There's a large, vacant hole in my family and in my heart that refuses to be refilled or repaired, for the hole belongs to my brother in all his existence both alive and un-alive. I've made room for this sadness that moves around my other emotions like vinegar with water; they don't mix but they maintain their own space. And it's okay that I'm not okay because I don't have to be. It took a lifetime for my brother and I to build the bond we actively nurtured, so it makes sense (to me) that it would take the second part of my life to work through his loss. There is no time limit for grief nor acceptance but what I have accepted is that I don't need to accept to make others feel better about me or to help myself feel better. 
The pain of my brother's death is long-lasting and very prominent- maybe I should accept the confusion...as my friend suggested last week. This tip, I absorbed and thought through, Accept the confusion of losing him and not the acceptance of losing him. 
Another person offered up, "Maybe if you do you, you'll feel better" in an attempt to offer up an alternative to embracing life again. Hmmm, I think I'll try the former. 

Keeping busy is something I've become a master at- occupying my time with life's errands and to do's, hoping that I lose myself in so many things that I have no energy or time left for love...because love hurts. Whether it's exercising, dance class, my daughter Mia, work or grad school, I leave myself in those places each time I touch them and walk away so that I can come back around and pick them up like the bread crumbs of Hansel and Gretel. In short, I know that I am lost and I have no idea how to get back home, a home that includes Charley very present and alive. So instead I wander with aim knocking on the doors of new experience, new lives, and opportunities in an effort to find something or someone's to help me feel semi-alive again. 

People compliment me with words of strengthening encouragement, "You're one of the strongest people I know" or "How do you do it all" and even, "From the outside you look like you have it all together. You make it look easy". 
But what's IT? Life? The emotional turmoil I'm managing? Raising a child on my own AND all the other stuff typical life has chucked at me? Just when I think I can't handle anything more, the stars smile down at me and add another load of heavy dust...and as I think God won't give me more than I can bear, he gives me more and I shrug my shoulders and resign. This is life. This is life. This is life. 

I seem to think that Charley's passing is mine and only mine and I'm affected in this way because he's Charley. And there's never been a Charley without a Yolie or a Yolie without a Charley. I'm participating in my own loss without agreeing to do so, and learning to navigate this solo self with my brother's spirit riding close to my heart. Lost is an okay place for me and it feels safe because you see, being lost means that love will find me again while I'm searching for a way to live.