Like Yesterday

Another grieving mom who visited the blog yesterday said, “I would love to tell you that time heals everything… but it doesn’t. I’m still heartbroken beyond words. I still cry every day. I still wish/replay every moment of the morning we discovered Matt dead.”

And I absolutely believe her. I was thinking last week, before I read her post, that here, as we near the three-month anniversary of Hudson’s death, I still feel like it all happened just yesterday. I know in my head that almost three months have gone by. I can call to mind many things that have happened since then—places I’ve been, people I’ve seen, conversations I’ve had, books I’ve read, visits with the grief counselor and support groups. Many days and many moments separate today from the day Hudson died.

And yet those four horrible days still seem like they just happened. Like I just went through them. I still feel like I did right when after it happened. In fact, I feel even worse than I did then, the protective coating of shock having long since worn off. I keep thinking that as each day goes by, the pain will lessen, but it doesn’t. Every single day is still a struggle—a struggle to keep going at all, a struggle to comprehend, a struggle to process, a struggle to even imagine the future, let alone plan for it. There are certainly lighter moments in most days, but those moments only fleetingly lift the crushing weight off, just long enough to catch a breath and brace myself for the next wave.

I think this has to be one of the hardest parts about the process of grief. Just as in the beginning, you cannot comprehend how the world can even keep turning outside the horror that you are enduring, so as time goes on, you cannot comprehend how the world can keep turning faster than you are ready for it to. People outside your smallest inner circle are moving on. You are at least moving forward. And yet, in a heartbeat, in one note sounding at the beginning of a song on the radio, in one glimpse of a photo that you look at every day, or with no trigger at all, you are transported right back to that horrific moment when the world was ripped out from under you.

I know that time will never fully heal this wound, but I do look forward to a tomorrow where it doesn’t feel like it just happened yesterday.

As for this tomorrow, we are on our way to Charlotte to say goodbye to another beautiful, brilliant, funny, high-spirited, loving girl taken from her family and friends far too soon. My heart is just so heavy.