by Charlene Iannella

Created on: July 15, 2010

Loss is a thief in the night who throws a bucket of cold water over his victim, followed by a ton of bricks.  It is what a wife, mother, sister, friend always fears but feels insulated from it becoming reality by the very means of having the fear.  It is what makes some people believe in an afterlife, because they need to believe that their loved one is somewhere, and others believe in so much less because of the randomness it exhibits.  Loss is indiscriminate, choosing have’s and have not’s, any kind of color and all areas and ages. It is the one thing in life from which we can be insured but not protected.  It is a universal inevitable, that each of us will end.

The idea of dying is so terrifying that it’s easy to forget how hard surviving can be.  There is more motivation needed to get through days, due to the heavy burden of memories ricocheting across the mind.  Memories spiked with the knowledge of never being able to see that person smile or hear them laugh again.  The pain seems to snake its way through the body causing an almost physical pain.  And always, frozen pictures remain and a constant why rises up on lips moist with tears.  A why that cannot be answered by anyone, yet everyone keeps trying.

I know how to go to work the next days and weeks and months after the event.  I know how to listen politely when people say “comforting” things to me and how to say “yes it is” when they tell me how hard it must be.  I know how to keep going even after I feel I have been burnt alive and feeling like the very air is acid to the wound that is my skin.  Most shatteringly, I know how it infects my being, making me worry about my child’s ability to drive on a rainy, windy night somewhere in the distant yet near future.  How the loss itself doesn’t protect a person from more loss of the very fabric of their heart.

I know how to move on from the loss and love again, while still asking why and retaining a sadness that will never fully go away.  Whatever invisible forces drive events seem to cut the people surrounding the deepest, so their wounds never fully heal but keep re-opening to be salved over and over again.

Most heart-wrenchingly, I know what it’s like to lose when it feels I have regained.  When I lose a love again from loss itself, watching them self destruct grief and somehow blaming everyone in the loss, like accomplices

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