Hollow

            I feel disjointed from my body with the reality of my Mother’s death stalking me slightly out of sight, creeping around my peripheral line of vision. I feel hollow, with the echoes reverberating inside me trying to call attention to something I don’t understand. My therapist said I need to cry more, but I am just not able to let myself go. This pain is comforting in a way. It is holding me together when all I want to do is avoid connection to this world twirling around me, confusing me, and reminding me that I am not complete. Incomplete? Is that what I feel? Maybe, I truly don’t know. 

Death truly does bring the best and the worst in people. You know who you can count on. It solidifies the strength of a relationship or brings forth its demise.  Sue and I often speak of our dead and the funerals. I have said many a time that one may not remember who all came to a loved one’s funeral, but we never forget who wasn’t there. Having someone not come to a funeral who one expected be there feels like being abandoned. It compounds the grief being experienced. It can often lead to the end of a relationship. I try to not make final decisions about relationships in the first two years following a death. Too much gets jumbled up with the pain of grief. Regardless, the disappointment is felt deeply at a time when one needs much support and familiar warmth.

            So for now, I sit with this hollow, disconnected, and incomplete feeling. It is odd, this hollowness. I find myself “checking out” more and more each day. I missed three red lights last week, thankfully they were at inconsequential intersections.  I miss so many turns and exits that I told a client the other day that my tombstone will say, “Vicenta. She made many U-turns.”