Monday, May 9, 2016

Longing....

Sometimes there are things that touch me. Turn me upside down and inside out. Often they highlight a feeling of longing deep within me. A feeling that I rarely hang out in. I am a pragmatist. I feel whatever feelings come along but if they do not move me where I desire to be I pay little attention to them and move on.

Longing - deep yearning or desire for something. I have had inexplicable moments of longing for all of my life. Sometimes, in the past, I could pin it on something like wanting a lover/boyfriend, or being somewhere else, or even pictures of the Universe. Real images or not, they bring about a sense of longing, like I remember a time when I lived amongst them, so much more than I do now.



I think we all experience longing. A huge part of grief is longing. Longing that things could have been different. As a parent of a child who died the longing can be intense. It is your job to keep your child safe. The belief that if you or someone else would have done something different, your child would still be here, alive.... It can be very heavy. In my grief experience that is something I chose to explore very rarely. And that is not a judgment towards anyone, including myself. Everyone's experience of grief is different. For me I found it impractical. I focused on the raw pain, deep sadness and even rage from the experience. But, what was done was done. If anything like that happened again I would make some different choices but I could not change the past. Nor could I change the fact that my son was dead.

And then a song like this comes along. It's been out since 2011 but I am hearing it and feeling it now and I cannot stop listening.


The longing it elicits is not connected to any one thing; a relationship, being somewhere else, what could be, what used to be, the Universe, the life of my Eli... but rather all of it.

I can say that the feelings of inexplicable longing are more poignant, powerful, timeless and common since the death of my son. So I am listening to this song over and over again and crying. Tears are streaming down my face as I write this and listen to the song. And I feel that in this seemingly strangeness or even silliness that there is healing that is occurring with each replay. It's like another part of me is being opened up and released through my tears every time the song starts again.

My son and his death truly has been and continues to be the crack in my being that lets the light in.