Coming to a head

Dear Sonzee, 

Hi baby girl! How are you? I am sitting on the porch facing the lake in VV, for another summer without you. I was (as usual) holding everything together. Keeping myself (physically and emotionally) occupied to prevent the whispers of grief that I have kept at bay in that locked space. While I know 2 things can exist, I can enjoy my summer and I can miss you; I can continue to live life without you, and I can also miss you so terribly I want to be with you. The 2 existing things are coming to a head. 

Last weekend (as you probably know because Gan Eden surely got more crowded) a flash flood went through a river in Texas, where a lot of summer camps were located. The impact was deadly with an entire bunk of 8/9 year old girls and their counselors swept away; some of their bodies still have yet to be located. While the news of the reality of that situation was spreading across the US, your sisters were participating in a camp marathon where they chose to run in honor of you. Again 2 truths existing together colliding in my heart and head. 

Any loss of a child sits heavy beyond belief in my core. I know what these parents are feeling, the panic, absence, anger, confusion, intense pain, all with the added challenge that those who have never experience their child's death are saying how they are heartbroken (and while that may be true, they have no idea). They get to wake up to their children. They have them still, here. They are heartbroken at the potential of their loss, but they are unable to truly grasp the new reality of these newly bereaved parents. The ones I will soon see popping up in the online bereaved mom/parent support groups. The ones who now know the pain of everything they have always been subconsciously afraid of experiencing. 

The black hole of grief has opened up and swallowed me. I dislike this hole, despite the fact that my therapist would tell me (and after 5 years I know) that 2 things can exist, I can sit in the hole, I can give the grief time to sit with me, AND I can climb out of the hole. (For the record, I prefer to stay out of the hole and not even entertain it, because as your brother Tzvi would say, "why would I want to think about it when it's too painful") After 5 years I have almost mastered the ability of skipping over the holes, or so I have thought. Because always, when I think I have, and it has been a decent amount of time since the last "oops I feel into the hole I was avoiding moment", I inevitably find myself back at the bottom of the Alice in Wonderland hole. I guess maybe I believe my therapist a bit more about 2 things being able to exist. I can sit here in this horrible pitch-black hole filled with your absence and excruciating pain, AND I know that I will be able to survive the depths of what I have fallen into. 

I just wish these 2 things didn't have to co-exist.