by love always

Created on: May 13, 2009   Last Updated: May 14, 2009

How do you move on after a death of a loved one

"God! No!" were the words swelling free between the muffled sobs. My mother removed her clutched hands from my grandmother. They found their way to cover her swollen, tear ridden eyes. Her body rocked back and forth in the kitchen tables chair. These were the first moments I was greeted with upon walking through the front door. Immediately I made my way through the kitchen and to the back door. I said "Let me know when something else happens, okay?" . My eleven year old legs carried me across the garage floor and onto the green grass. I picked up the single item I was given for comfort. A small football from my uncle. The only one to console me after my fathers death. Two brothers, a mother, more aunts, uncles and cousins than a child could ask for. And one single uncle cared for me. The feeling of the football in my hands was the happiest place I could be for the moment. Everything else just fell away into the back ground.

Days earlier we sat behind a black sheer curtain, hidden away from an awkward crowd. My mothers tears were endless. My brothers were silenced the night of his death. In that very moment, the day of his funeral, I sat. I observed absolutely everything and everyone around me. It didn't make since. An overbearing sense of overwhelming sadness was like a darkened, thick water surrounding me. It wasn't within me. It was surrounding me. Within was peace. Within was understanding. Within was love. Yet, everything outside of me was telling me otherwise. Standing in the bereavement line, people passed with their condolences. Strangers cried. Stranger upon stranger passed and cried. To my dismay, I considered there might be a thing wrong with me. How could strangers cry and I couldn't? Not a single tear touched my eye. I stood in line wondering at their sadness. I couldn't understand. And as they passed along with my passing secluded thoughts, I remembered. Because of what happened two nights after his death, in that moment standing in that line I remembered the reason I couldn't cry and why they couldn't understand. And why I couldn't tell them. They wouldn't listen to, and they wouldn't believe an eleven year old child. My voice among knowledgeable yet crying adults, was silenced. Yet my heart was steadied for a long journey in a lonely girls world.

Two nights after my father died I had a dream. As vivid as any waking day. In a white robe standing in single file amidst other children, I filed

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