A Moment in the Night

You know those hours when you're trying to fall asleep but can't seem to? Or maybe you have been dozing, in and out, but you're not sure? Well, Thursday, the night before I woke up sick, was one of those times, and at one point there in the quiet half-asleep dark I thought of Mom's death, of her being gone forever and never seeing her again, and felt this huge rush of deep grief and said to myself "Don't go there, I don't want to go there." It's unbearable is what it is, though of course we all bear it some way, don't we. I'm not alone in that.

Christmas card from Charlene

I've done dishes twice this morning, and made breakfast for the two of us. I've put laundry in, changed the sheets on the bed, swept the kitchen floor, started cleaning out the office closet, wiped out the fridge a bit, put the dried rosehips into a jar, and sorted through the overstuffed linen closet, putting a garbage bag full of unmatched sheets aside for Scott to cover his tomatoes when he finally gets his garden made and planted.

Now I'm starting on my books, going to see which ones I will never likely read again and can part with. I happened — quel co-ink-ee-dink — to open to this page in one of them:

In a study of diaries written over many years' time, Paul C. Rosenblatt, Ph.D., found that people may recover from the worst of their soul-grief in the first year or two after a tragedy, depending on a person's support systems and so forth. But afterward, the person continues to experience periods of active grieving. Although the episodes become farther and farther apart in time and shorter in duration, each recurrence carries close to the same intensity of gut-staggering grief as the first occasion. - Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D, from Women Who Run with the Wolves