love keeps her in the air

grief doesn’t ask before arrival.

she punches you in the gut, rips a hole in your chest. she digs out a place to stay right in your heart.

grief sends her heavy tendrils down your veins and roots you where you stand.

she throws her head back and howls reverberations through every fiber.

grief doesn’t ask. she pulls the air from the room, dims the lights, draws the curtains, bangs the shutters.

grief invades and takes and holds and burrows and buries. no holds barred. no concessions granted. she’s here to stay.

three months without you. nine years without you. the timing matters less than the ache. even when things are good, there’s still a gaping hole, an empty spot at the table, family pictures that feel a little less crowded. there’s fewer plates at Christmas breakfast. there’s fewer hugs and not enough jokes. the hugs and the jokes and the holiday meals, the family texts, the memories – life goes on and it doesn’t. rooted to the spot where time stood still, 3 months ago, 9 years ago.

I think I’m also grieving who I am. or more accurately who I was. or even – who I am not. this life is layered and heavy. it’s hard to lift off and soar, weighted down with illness, trials, grief. I feel like I’m stuck on an endless stairmaster, climbing and struggling and breathless, unable to reach the top, unable to grasp a firm hold and stand still. I don’t know how to stay afloat and also keep moving forward. I’ve got one oar, spinning in circles. I feel weighted and bloated and unable to maneuver through the rapids.

every time I start to reach a peak and level off – we slide right down again, hit the muck and more at the valley even harder than the time before, stuck in sucking sticky mud that clings and grasps.

Gideon asks for you often. he wants to call, he wants to show you pictures he’s done or towers he’s built. he wants to show you how he’s utilizing the Legos you got him, or aka if you want to play the Bluey game you found. “I KNOW uncuh Cwis is in heaven but that’s cwose enough to pay, right?”

I keep coming back to that one Firefly quote:

Know what the first rule of flying is?

Love. Can know all the math in the ‘verse but take a boat in the air that you don’t love? She’ll shake you off just as sure as a turn in the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down…

I don’t know how I’m still in the air. By all rights we should have crashed and burned long ago, stripped of everything, crumbling dust all around us.

it’s been 9 years since Greg died and almost 4 mos since Chris died and everything is so heavy. I feel so raw and so tired all the time – but love keeps me going through it all. I don’t understand it, I don’t want it, I just – love is keeping me in the air when I ought to fall down, and I guess if I’m still here, there’s a reason for it. so we will keep going. one step, one day, one agony after another.