I am starting this off with a surprise message I found from Erin yesterday. She had apparently gotten into one of my work binders, written what you see in the picture, and I found it yesterday as I was preparing to go to a business meeting. It made me smile. Then I realized that not only do I need to keep the page intact, I need the entire pad. It will never be used again.
She wrote me Meow’s all the time. She called me Meowmy sometimes, too. She and her friends were big “meowers.” It was cute and silly.
Erin’s cat, Buffy, has been treating me strangely over the past several weeks. She finds me at least once or twice during the night, and she makes sure to put her head on top of my arm (sometimes my foot), and she grabs me with her paws. She didn’t do this to me before Erin died. I wonder what she is thinking? Either way it is comforting. I would let the dog back on the bed with us if he wouldn’t ruin the bedspread I got last year. Sometimes I need a big Puppy hug.
I can say that today, so far, I feel OK. That’s all I am willing to concede – OK. However, for the second night in a row I slept with a piece of rose quartz strapped to my chest, and I recharged it in water this morning and put it there again. Yesterday was so awful I am not sure I can go there again and survive. Anyway, I found this nifty site on stones you can use for grieving. Part of it explains rose quartz.
I really wish that I could explain just how and why I am feeling one way one minute, and another the next. I can’t make sense of it myself, so I am sure I cannot communicate it to you. I hope that everyone who knows someone who is grieving will understand that. It’s not that we don’t want to feel better. Trust me – I do not want to feel like this. I know it will be painful to think of Erin always, I just hope it’s less painful. I hope it’s not debilitating. Right now it is crippling. In a language that everyone can understand, my heart is broken. It’s more like shattered. It will refuse, but it will be different than it was before. It will never be “before” and it will never be “the same.”
I have pondered, just how do people endure this sort of loss? Because I have no idea how any normal person would get through this. I don’t consider myself so normal, and I am bewildered. I even emailed the person who trained me to help others with emotional clearing today, to ask her how in the world do you classify and handle grief? I hope to get a thoughtful answer.
Perhaps it’s more like a trauma? I do have flashbacks. Shaun said he does too, and another person I know who is grieving their child said they do as well. I can’t “just not think about it.” It doesn’t ask to be invited in. This is like a home invasion, and the home is my mind and heart.
I will close this one by saying that one of the last things Erin texted me was Meow. She was in her hospital bed in the “regular” room before things got so bad, and she was taking pictures of me sitting across the room in the chair and sending them to me. So I did the same, and as she did many times before she replied “Meow.” I love and cherish those Meows now.
