feeling undone

Comfort, Deb Talan

I am going to tell you one of the secrets of life that you won't understand for yourself until it happens to you. When someone you love dies it sticks in you forever, it is the emotional equivalent to oatmeal sticking to your ribs and your stomach and filling you up all day. I once heard of grief as something like a wave which washes over you, but they always leave out the part about how even though you kick and fight back to the shore you still find remnants of that battle: sand in your belly button and ears and the sore eyes of too much salt water.

Grief fills you with this longing that doesn't easily go away, like when you feel sad or have a Breakfast at Tiffany's case of the mean reds, and don't know what to do so you pile into a car and drive until you've seen the sun set and rise in many states and you feel calm again; or you watch reruns of shows which make you feel strangely nostalgic, shows which make you feel like someone out there got you: Felicity, My So Called Life, Scrubs, The Waltons, whatever.

Grief is sneaky like a thief, finding a way through and past all the best securities your mind and heart have put up. And like any unwanted guest, grief decides when it's leaving. Somehow the thief got in tonight and I am missing my Dad something fierce and feeling homesick for a time and a place that don't belong to me anymore...