My own deep thoughts

As I tried desperately to put my thoughts into a contained place so I could unleash my  creativity and write  about love and romance for my  writers group meeting, parts of me wandered deeper into  another channel of my mind. So with that, I spent a good part of the end of my weekend wrestling with my very private rationalizing, regarding a very tender subject  to me.  Grief, Chronic Sorrow, life after loosing a loved one.

Over the weekend I  reunited with a dear friend from my younger years. I had accepted an invitation to my best friend from high school  daughter's graduation party. I was thrilled  to be able to join in the celebration for  her  youngest child.  Excited, to wish her well  as she takes the next steps to begin a new journey of another chapter in her young life. But more than that, it was a chance for my friend and I to  share joyous parts of our lives for a few moments,  after all these years.

As I  met with my friend,  I was delighted that I also was able to visit briefly with her mother. I was in awe,  that her mother remembered me and was only to happy to recapture  a few highlights from our younger days.  Days of big hair-dos and designer jeans. A time for us when life was just a bit simpler. A time when we were not the parents and eagerly beginning our very own journeys in life.

It was a great pleasure to reminisce the past years of our youth and then share in minor details of some current  events of our personal lives. With promises to have a girls night soon, I departed. 

Later that night lost in my reflection of the day's events I retired to my room thinking about how very differently our lives have been played out. Even though we were both mothers to three children, now single again - picking up the pieces from broken marriages and moving on from our own personal heart-aches, our lives had indeed differed.

  I could not help but wonder how it must feel to have a  mother  there to share in  the celebration of my children's high school graduations. How full her world must have been to have her parents there to to be part of her world  while she raised her children. While elated  to see her mother I was also touched with sorrow as I was reminded of the losses I had long ago learnt to accept into my world.  

My mother died 20 feet from where I stood while I was engaged in a passionate conversation with my younger sister regarding some current crisis of our own emotions.  With a long sigh  she breathed in one last time.  Silently  a single tear  rolled down her cheek as we watched her  through our own tears move from this world to another. Leaving behind my two sisters and I. The Three of us now, all  that remains  from my family of 8. 

Twenty two years later I am brought back to that time  when I held a life in my womb as my heart said good bye to another.  Only my eldest son Zach had the honor and privilege of meeting my parents. His time with them cut all to short as they became victims of cancer. I was in my first trimester with my second child when my mother passed away  following my fathers death nine months earlier.

So I found myself now thinking  about memories that I neatly had tucked away. Perhaps for a moment just like this, to now be let to resurface. Precious times I shared with the members of my family that I so ardently missed now. Emotions within me triggered, calling out to me, as I shared in celebration for those friends around me, while silently tending to my secret sorrow. Sorrow from a world filled with saying goodbye to loved ones far to soon. Heart ache from accepting that one day far to soon  my two youngest sons will  also join my parents and my three brothers in the after life.
So with love and courage I move on, carrying with me the chronic sorrow of living with loss as I accept all that  my two terminally ill  sons will never experience. Along with the pain of knowing, once again far to soon I will have to say goodbye and find the courage to look past all the sorrow to see my tomorrow.