It Can't Be Stopped (written on a very bad day)

This is Joey and me at his Waikapu house when it was being built. His future. Our future. Him, on island, with Rachel, babies, celebrations, love, laughter, music, conversations, dreams.

Over.

“Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
Job 7:11

Sometimes, I get ashamed of talking about my grief. "I should be better now", "I am a Christian--don't I trust God?", "Others seem to be doing better than I am", "People want me to move on", "My family needs me".

The simple fact is, I can't help myself. I can't stop it. I can delay it, postpone it, ignore it for a little while, but that requires a lot of energy and concentration-- like holding my breath, or holding in my stomach, and after a while I can't do it anymore and I let go.

My grief is omnipresent. My loss of Joey is my first and last thought in each day, and in my breathing all day long, and in fact it lives in it's own place in my chest now...like a tumor that grew around my heart one night. It won't kill me living in there, it's just impossible to remove it because it's tentacles reach into my blood supply. It can't be taken out. It must be lived with. And my heart and my breathing go on, but will never be the same again.

I found the following excerpts on the internet. Thank God for the internet. It is such a place of solace for the grieving. My kids say, "You are always on your computer, Mom". Yes, I am. It's my chapel. It's where my counselors and my comforters live. I can say here what I feel and no one stops me. I don't hurt anyone here. It's my safest place right now. Thank God for people who write about grief. They have made room in the circle for me. I hope there is someone who feels that way about me and my words.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote the classic book “On Death and Dying” which we read after Joey passed. These are some words from a follow up book called, “On Grief and Grieving,”

The Inner World Of Grief

Everyone experiences many losses throughout life, but the death of a loved one is unmatched for its emptiness and profound sadness. Your world stops. You know the exact time your loved one died – or the exact moment you were told. It is marked in your mind. Your world takes on a slowness, a surrealness. It seems strange that the clocks in the world continue when your inner clock does not.

No one can give you words to make you feel better; there are none.

Your loss and the grief that accompanies it are very personal, different from anyone else’s. Others may share the experience of their losses. They may try to console you in the only way they know. But your loss stands in its meaning to you, in its painful uniqueness.

We all play roles in our lives: spouse, parent, child, family member, friend. You know your loved one in a way that no one else ever did or ever will. One person’s dying touches many people in many different ways; everyone feels that loss individually. Your task in your own mourning and grieving is to fully recognize your own loss, to see it as only you can. In paying the respect and taking the time it deserves, you bring integrity to the deep loss that is yours.

“Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
Job 7:11