Raw Pain

There are moments when the grief hits like a wave. Suddenly you realise that there is a hole in your heart that wasn’t there before. Is it a hole or a lead weight? I’m not quite sure – it’s sometimes both. And you notice that the personalities that were an everyday part of your world are no longer present. You think about them and you remember them, but you miss their tangibility. Your soul feels a little crumpled without them there. It was their love which inflated you, without you realising that’s what it was doing. Now that it’s gone, you long for it. For Jessie’s arms around your neck, for Clint’s eyes locking into yours. And you see what a gift they both were. As hard as it is to understand why their time on earth is up, you can also accept it somehow because you know that when they were here they lived life fully. They played hard. They loved completely. They fought. They laughed. They lived. And that has inspired you.

Sometimes grief is a quiet dullness. You fumble over your words and you realise that your confidence levels have dropped. You see grief as a vulnerable weakness. And you have avoided vulnerability and weakness your whole life. People keep telling you you’re a strong woman. You don’t feel strong now, and so the self-doubt creeps in.

Heavy heart. Empty heart. Hollow gap, aching inside.

I wrote an email today. In it, I said that I, Heather Reen was involved in a head-on collision and had not yet recovered or returned to work. I apologised for the inconvenience caused.

In that moment I pushed send, lay back and had a wave of realisation wash over me.

I was in a fuckin head-on collision. I lost my daughter and my boyfriend. This is the stuff you don’t put in the email but it’s the stuff that will keep you from ever fully recovering. You can’t get them back and they’ve left a huge gap. Life is and never will be the same. The tears flow. And your soul groans. You feel the loss of the ones you loved. You feel the loss of their love for you. The life you knew is over. The one you’re managing to live seems small and a bit stuck. Your purpose is to heal. Heal enough to be operated on again. And then heal some more. 
Pretty straight forward really, but very much out of sync with your plans for this year. You’re separated from your surviving daughter – not only by her pre-teen age but by 2 provinces and a plane ride. And it feels all wrong. 
You’re her mom.