Nighttime
Night is the hardest part of the day. I’m alone and quiet with my thoughts. The mind races. The grief becomes all-consuming. I will have held it together all day. Socialized. Laughed. Felt happiness. Amidst all the shock and numbness that still lingers, it happens.
Life moves forward.
But as the sky darkens, I feel the crushing anxiety of confronting another dark evening and having to wake up to a new day without my mother. The sadness and gravity of this loss weighs heavily. The evening is when the nightmare becomes more of a reality.
But I try to find solace in these images of my mom as a new mother to quiet my thoughts.
The above is from a happy spring scene in 1983. My mother was my age. And I was a freshly minted Mohawk baby – paving the way for Sunny’s epic ‘hawk 26 years later.
The blissed out look on my mom’s face is everything. These are the scenes I hope to see in my dreams when I stop needing the support of Ambien to shut down my nightmares.
Loss is some suckfest. And while it feels so deeply personal and unique, it’s one of those devastating connections and universal experiences that tie us together. And there’s comfort that comes from shared humanity, both in life and death.
So tonight, I’ll focus on this beautiful new mother and the joy of her new baby. Here’s to sweet dreams and finding light when darkness is so often the more compelling path.
