Friday, April 13, 2012

Life Recolored

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When I think of my life before Eve died and was born, it seems like someone else's life.  It feels unfamiliar.  Could those days have really been lived by me, in this same body that bore death?

It is impossible, but somehow true.

There is life before and life after, and they are the same life, yet feel like two.  And I don't know who I am, stuck somewhere in the middle of before and after.  I wonder if I will be stuck forever.

It feels to me like the two lives are colored in shockingly different hues.  In my memory of the before, there is so much light, so much bright color, even though there had previously been deep darkness in my growing up years.  Finally, though, everything was coming together -- faith, health, family, purpose, and meaning all converging into beautifully stitched together life.

Until the unthinkable happened, and the light vanished.  Or perhaps it didn't disappear entirely, but faded drastically to the point of feeling gone, and gone forever.  Life after is colored differently, muted and drab, both in my mind and in what I perceive with my physical eyes.

So much of the color has gone.

And really, I'm not so unhappy about that.  Because days when the sun is unclouded and the world is bright and beautiful are the hardest.  I want the world to be dark and light-lonely with me, and I writhe in pain when it isn't.

But even though I am at peace with my faded life, questions still remain:

Will the colors return?  Will the smooth blue of the clearest sky ever pierce my heart again, or the purple and yellow of the flowers we just planted ever conquer the stone wall of my sadness?

Will I ever love the brightness of spring and glow of summer evenings again? 

Will my darkened heart ever be overcome with brightness in this life, this new and strange and grating life?

Is the person who I was, the girl who loved light, gone forever, gone with my daughter?

I don't know -- and I don't know if I care, either.  I rather like the drab, the gray.  For now, anyway.  It feels more right than the multicolored life I used to know.

So I will wait, wait until I know what to hope for from this strangely tinted life, and try to feel my way through the dark.

Has grief recolored your life?  How do you cope with that reality?


On a related note, I recently discovered this video from Grief Speaks on the topic of grief and beautiful days.  It helps me to feel a little less alone.  I hope it does the same for you, too:


2 comments:

  1. It's two years today since my baby son died in my arms. I know that I felt as you do now and I know that for me, the colour is brighter now, because if I can do anything, I can make myself see what he never got to see and be better because of him.

    I also know that 4 months out was the darkest of times. I fell into the arms of the community at glow in the woods and raged out my loss and sorrow there.

    I am so sorry youdo not have Eve. It is not fair. Whatever we do to rationalise it and make peace with it, it would be better not to have to go through this. Much love.

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  2. Thank you, Merry. I'm sorry your son is gone, too. I'm about 4 months and 3 weeks out now. <3

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"I am glad you are here with me."
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King