… trying to get my feet back on solid ground. It feels like nothing has changed and yet everything has changed. How weird.
The only other person I’ve lost that meant this much to me was my dad and then I was too young to really wrap my head around it. I felt his loss and like Lauren, it was the loss of someone who truly “got” me. Unlike Lauren, though, there wasn’t a day when I didn’t know my dad as someone who was very sick, in a myriad of physical ways. His death was truly bittersweet for me because while I lost someone who was so important to me, I was glad that he was out of the pain and sadness that colored much of what I perceived was his later life. Lauren, on the other hand, was one of the most vibrant beings I’ve ever known. Looking back over her pictures, I see she was almost never without a smile. She radiated joy to all who knew her, even peripherally.
Both of them affected me profoundly, in ways I probably can’t really even know at this point. I know that no one could ever take the place of my dad in my life and no one will take that same spot Lauren had. And no one should. Those places remain sacred. And ultimately, the sadness over their loss goes away and is replaced by something beautiful.
But right now, I am enveloped in a miasma of sadness. Like a fog that wafts in and out and around me … sometimes clearing for a bit so I can see the details of my life in sharp focus. And right now, as I sit here typing this, it feels very thick to me. I see but I can’t. I know this doesn’t make a lot of sense and this entry is probably better written in a private journal and not out here for all the world to see but so be it.
It’s all a process, I know. And soon enough, my feet will be planted firmly back into my life and I will be ranting about the idiot in the white house, goofs who accuse me of trying to kill their pets because they didn’t order food in time and now they have nothing for them to eat and the latest gossip on Paris (eww) Hilton. (Actually, not that because I don’t think I wrote about her before and I probably won’t now but you get the jist of it, right?)
For right now, though, I will sip coffee, wrap a strange red and white stuffed snake around me like a blanket and stare out the window at the gray sky. And miss the little girl/young woman who understood my 12 year old soul.
How do you wrap your head around something like losing someone that had such a big presence in your life? I have absolutely no idea. But I do know that you can take every ounce of comfort in knowing that you enriched her life just as much as she enriched yours. Some people go through their entire lives without knowing anyone that actually “gets” them. Count yourself as fortunate that you had time with someone who did. It fucking sucks when they’re gone (okay, not so eloquent), but for as empty as things seem to be when people are gone, always remember how fuller your life became because they were there in the first place.
Lisa, I am sure you will never forget Lauren. But never forget too what a strong and loving presence you were in her life, and how much you added richness to her life. And never forget how you came through for her time and time again. I am sure your companionship, devotion and love meant all the world to her. That’s how I feel about my relationship with my Mom, particularly her time in the nursing home and in the hospital. Let it all come out. Those tears are not so much tears of sorrow as tears of appreciation that you could be so loved and so touched by one person, and it went both ways.
Only one-
eccentric Aunt :)