Thoughts (Grief and Loss)

Before Mama retired, we used to have lunch together in the staff lounge nearly every day. For some reason it always seemed to take her longer to heat her lunch up than it did me so, more often than not, I'd typically be seated at the table before her. She had this habit of kinda strumming her finger tips on the top of my head or along my back as she passed behind me. It used to kinda low key bug me because I'm not much of a "casual toucher", if that makes any sense. But just now, as I walked past an empty chair I strummed my fingertips along the top of it's back--no real thought to it, just a mindless little motion in a day filled with mindless nonsense. The impact of that one simple act was like a kick in the gut. Suddenly the memories of all those times Mama did that to me flooded through my mind and I can't help but WISH she would do that to me one more time. That she was HERE to do that no matter how much it once annoyed me. 

I feel sometimes as though my friends have all forgotten that she's gone. Anytime I talk about her or how much I miss her, they act somewhat surprised, like, "Oh, yeah." But I can't seem to NOT think about her and how very gone she is. Even when I'm not actively thinking about her, I'm thinking about her, if that makes sense. Things she used to do. Things we did together. How she could drive me crazier than anyone else but also how she could put me back together anytime I fell apart. And I just don't know what to do with myself anymore. I can't seem to put myself back together this time. Because the one who knew where all the pieces went is the one who shattered me this time.

It's been seven months and sometimes the grief and loss still feels as raw and painful as it did the day she left us. Everyone said, "Oh, it'll get easier." But will it? How can it when the very center of my universe is no longer there? 

My sisters talk about how they still sometimes reach for the phone to call her. But that's not the case for me. I am always fully aware that she's not here. I've never forgotten. I don't know if it's because I watched her fade away and they didn't. Or if it's because we were almost always together both before and after she got sick. I mean, when I say she was the center of my universe, I mean, there was not a single aspect of my life that she didn't have some role in. Even after she retired and we no longer worked together, we were still always up to something together. Before she died I'd never gone longer than a week, MAYBE two weeks, without seeing her or at the very least talking to her. And I  haven't seen her in seven months. So yeah, her absence from my life if very stark.

I know I'll survive this. And it probably will get easier. Life has a way of never staying the same for too long and eventually I will figure out a way to live without her in way that doesn't emphasize her absence quite as much. But honestly? I don't know that I want it to. In some weird way, carrying her absence around with me--shouldering this sharp grief keeps her alive for me. She's never FULLY gone if the pain of her loss is streaming down my face.