Reflections From The Wreckage

A dream and a nightmare, two things can be true. Both need convincing because both were and are a reality.

I have to constantly convince myself that you were real. I didn’t make you up yet I wrestle with the reality that your death was also made up. A bad dream, a nightmare yes a nightmare. One that I’ll soon wake up from. Yet I am awake and you still aren’t here. I see the evidence of your death but I still need convincing.

Much like I need convincing that you were here. I see you in pictures and videos but my mind. My mind can’t seem to wrap itself around that reality. I don’t understand why this is. I don’t understand why it feels as though it’s playing tricks with me.

Why can I not remember you before it all went bad? Why do I only remember you once the sickness came? When I see you I only see that bald head with little fuzz all around it. Then I see a picture or a video intentionally or unintentionally. There you are, our little blonde haired green eyed boy. That’s you. But my mind almost refuses to go back to that time.

Which makes it seem like it was a dream. Something I made up. Something beautiful and wonderful and amazing. I’ve had to wrestle and wrestle and wrestle with your life. You were here and now you’re gone. I have plenty of evidence that you were here but this brain of mine almost refuses to believe it. Maybe it’s doing its job. Protecting itself and me from opening the gates too wide. Too much can get through and it’s been through so much already. So here I sit wrestling with your memory.

I talk about you and still look for you. I ask people who spent time with you, what was he like here and there? Your things are still here. Things that you loved, things that you held dear. People you loved and they loved you as well. But who am I trying to convince? It still feels so very much like I am trying to convince myself. Force my mind to believe that you were here. If I make it believe you were here then I also have to believe you’re gone from here. So very very far away yet so very close in so many ways. But I suppose this is common, normal even.

“It’s so common after loss to wonder whether that life really happened at all. My very flawed brain forgets things I’ll eventually be older than he ever got to be. I’ve now spent more time without him than I did with him. But that life did happen. And I feel it with every fiber of my being, In so much of what I do & in all that I am. His existence has altered the course of my life much in the same way that your loved one has altered the course of your own life. And so their Influence, presence and love has permanence even when the body does not.” – empowered_through_grief