A Year is Forever and Nothing

One year ago today I lost my dearest friend, Wendy. She died at the young age of 37, just four months after her youngest child was born. I was pregnant at the time with Itty Bitty and had just lost my mother 5 weeks earlier to breast cancer. The last year seems like the blink of an eye. It also feel s like the longest time of my life. I still feel my spirit reeling most days. I have to emotionally slap myself in the face to remind me this is real. Wendy is really gone. My mother had battled cancer for 17 years, her death was not a surprise; but Wendy was young, she was healthy and she was the mother of children who still need her.

Sometimes I look at the world around me and find myself angry and how easily everyone seems to be going about their lives. I remember feeling similar after losing my first two babies prior to their birth. I just can’t see how you feel bad one day or week and “move on” in the next. I know Wendy, as I too would feel, wants the people who love her to continue living happy, healthly lives. Especially for the sake of her kids. My brain gets that; but my heart wants the world to continue to cry out for her daily. It feels too much like of a betrayal of our love for her to live life and be happy without her. Maybe these thoughts and feelings are ego-centric in nature. If the world, her husband, children, family and friends can move on without her, so could mine. Therefore my presence in this world seems less vital. My therapist (yes.) says it is normal to deal with ones own mortality in a situation like this. Blah, Blah, Blah…I just want Wendy back.

I am clearly stuck in emotional mud here. The steps of grieving which should be my way out… have gotten me as far as angry and I seem to have set up camp. Well, I am also scared shitless. Scared the world will forget what it has lost, that her daughter will never really know the spirit of her mother no matter how hard we all try and fearful that someday I will no longer be able to hear the sound of her laugh, remember what she smelled like or see the image of her face in my minds eye.

Ugh. Maybe a year from now…