The Portal: Portal-ity Thoughts

An article I wrote for Her View From Home To the Grieving Mother: You Did Everything You Could Dear Mama  – I understand how hard this is for you, as much as one bereaved mother can relate to another. I know your walls are up and your heart is broken.  You’re doing your best to get through each day when you’d really just like to just lay down on their grave or crawl into the casket and die too.  The pain is unbelievable, unbearable, beyond description. This type of loss is a little different. You’ve lost a child, but you’ve lost him or her to a darkness that’s spreading across our land at an alarming rate. It’s consuming our children.  It’s a war.  An epidemic.  A plague. You’re living part of a horrible history in our country and frankly, you cannot believe this is your life.  You’ve asked why a thousand times.  You’ve gone over every detail trying to figure out if you coul...

Grief is a weird thing.  At first, you're in total shock, you can't believe what has happened - but there is a flurry of activity, people, decisions, and you just do the things.  Auto Pilot. You understand that something horrible has happened, that your loved one is gone, but you really cannot wrap your head around it completely. As some time passes, things settle down and you have more time to contemplate your new situation. You still can't wrap your head around it, or even believe it . . . still. More time passes, and suddenly it's the first year anniversary.  You take time to reflect, not being able to believe that 365 days have passed, and almost all of them in a foggy blur.  You wonder how that happened.  How all those days have gone by - without them in it, without a hug, a text, a call. You are amazed, not because you made it this far, not because you're still getting out of bed, but because it literally feels like it happened yesterday and yet, ...