Ramblings of an Inquisitive Mind

February

I tried my best to stop it from coming. The last day of January I stayed in bed all day with the covers over my head. Wishing it away. Crying when I realized time just does whatever it wants to. It just keeps ticking away, one second at a time, no matter how hard we try to stop it.

You see, February is usually a pretty good month for me. I start on February 1st reminding my friends that it is my birthday month. But not this year. This February will be my first birthday without my mom and dad. For 54 years, there has been at least a card and a phone call but usually more: time spent with my family, a birthday lunch or dinner. I wish I had known last year that it was the last birthday I would spend with them.

I wish I had known I would start my 55th year without them. I would have done something special last year – something memorable. But I cannot even remember what we did last year. I know what I did with my friends, but I can’t call up even the faintest memory of being with my parents. I know that I went to Waynesboro but that is all I know. I’m sure that I got a card and an “I love you” – but I don’t even know where that damn card might be.

I miss them, my mom and dad. My heart is ripped to shreds. I wish I could have just one more second with them. One more second. One more hug. One more “I love you.”

Just one more second. Crazy, isn’t it? How many seconds pass during our lifetimes, and just a very few of those seconds are the ones that change your life forever. Time is a funny thing – it passes by and a second seems so insignificant. But it takes only one second to change your life forever. One breath, one heartbeat. One second, then you look up and your world has changed forever. Some of the changes are amazing and wonderful: a new love, an engagement, a new baby. But some seconds can change your life in ways you could never have imagined.

At some level, we all understand that our lives are finite, that we will all pass on to whatever happens after this life. But it never seems real until it hits close to home. The second I heard that my dad had passed away. The second I watched my mom take her last breath. These seconds redefined and reshaped my life.

I was not ready to let them go. I still need them. I need their guidance, their understanding, their love. I need their touch. I feel like the orphan girl Gillian Welch sings about: “I have no mother, no father . . . I am an orphan girl.” That is how I feel, trying to figure out how to live in a world without them.

I have often wondered how people survive horrible experiences like losing a child or losing multiple family members at once. How do they survive? How can they go on? It is still unbelievable to me that my sisters and I put our mother and father into the ground, then had to turn and walk away. How? How do we do it? Continue to breathe, continue to survive?

One of my all-time favorite books is The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck. The first line in the book says something like, life is difficult and once we accept this truth, we can transcend it. Life is hard. Accepting that fact is also hard. Loss is very, very hard. But a life with loss can still hold many beautiful moments.

That is what I am trying to hold onto. I am waiting for the next beautiful sunset. For the next “I love you.” For the next morning to come.