For the last few days, things have been blowing up in my brain. Like tiny explosions that leave a microburst in their wake. The thing about an explosion is the sudden bright light that appears just before the impact. Illuminating everything in a flash of searing white just before the impact and the subsequent hollowing out.
I’ve been trying to ride it. Let Jesus take the wheel. But he seems to have a proclivity for taking unexpected sharp lefts.
When hard stuff comes in quick succession — maybe like the high tide you thought was still a few hours away — the instinct is to grab your shit and run. But there is something about that bright white that happened in my brain where the darker spots were illuminated just a bit too long to get away from with a precursory cut-and-run.
This stuff didn’t happen to me. Or my husband. Or my kids. Per se. But the impact has still been felt. And my deep well of sadness has leaked up and out. Apparently there is a set depth that will eventually fill to overflowing. Who knew.
I want to say it started months and months ago when too many people that I hold dear were just being dealt too too much. My heart was hurting for them, whether it be a difficult rupture in a marriage, a sibling being hurt or dying, a parent with too many health struggles for one person to bear. Or a child far too young to be dealing with mortality and those struggles too. Or another friend in the throes of watching a friend lose a child.
You start to realize that just seems to be the sad and unfortunate way of life. As we age, struggles and hardships abound. We know more people, we care about more people. We follow social media and know too damned much.
Then the last couple of months brought a person into our lives that we hurt for. We decided, as a family, to try to help. And it backfired fairly spectacularly. So that was the first explosion-in-the-making. Only hearts were hurt, but it was still an impact that was deeply felt and the ripples are still in motion. That lasting feeling of when you try and fail. Then you kind of free fall into the space of what could I have done differently? Who will help this person now? Will they help themselves? And then… I wish I could have done more. That part. That was where the tears were coming from just yesterday as the girls and I went back over events.
In the midst of this, I get a text from a friend. One of the ones who was once everything and somehow got away in the middle of the living process when jobs and addresses change and you go from daily to “how could it have been years?” Something like the first intense grief you feel when you’re suddenly done with college and haven’t spoken to your closest high school confidante in months and months. But then with each move, job change, child born, school graduated from, you know. And you mourn. But you start to expect it and know it’s coming a little more each time.
When I first read the message on my screen, my brain refused to comprehend. Because it isn’t supposed to be like that. The timeline is off. If someone is only 52, with three kids, they aren’t supposed to not be doing well. Even once I started to gather more details, it just wouldn’t compute. And she was yet another person I hadn’t spoken to in years and years for far more co
mplicated reasons. We’d shared marriages, births, dreams. And it had all flown away in one or two hot, searing conversations where words couldn’t be unsaid.
Then, the text comes, a visit is planned and all of a sudden, we were headlong back into it all. And that’s when the explosions starting coming in quicker succession. Facts clicking into place. Timelines coming clearer with the gut-searing intensity of not enough left.
The reconnection with people you loved and lost, I’ve come to realize, is one of the most miraculous gifts of a life lived. Forgiveness for foibles of youth that comes when a conversation lasts well into the late afternoon like no time has passed. Or the lingering hug, infused with sobs, and you now know you have each other once again.
These are the gifts that also come from a tragic illness and imminent death too soon. In the misty-eyed moments of grief over loss, the love is what comes bubbling back up. And the rest ceases to matter.
TODAY’S THEME SONG: How many rules can I break. How many lies can I make. How many roles must I turn. To find me a place where the bridge hasn’t burned… What Can I Say. Brandi Carlile.
