December 23rd 125a

Looking around, I wonder, Is this what hell really looks like? It's the same walls, carpet, and ceilings as before. The furniture is the same too. So why am I seeing things so differently? Is my grief actually so powerful that it can change inanimate objects right before my eyes? I guess the answer would be yes. For what I see around me are the shadows of her, my precious girl, reflected back as if her spirit has infused the very grain of every surface here.

Or is it just me?

I wonder in these quiet times whether I have succumbed to a version of grief induced glaucoma. That my eyes have grown a sort of film over them that is my pain, a film that distorts everything that I see.

Everything is still real to me. I can run my hands over any surface and feel it. But it has changed. Though I wonder if someone who has never been here nor knows me would see the same thing?

They say death leaves a pallor that animals can detect, sometimes months later. Is that what I am experiencing, the pallor of my girl's death? Even though she did not die here. Certainly her spirit lives on here.

Or is it just me wishing it did?

I actually love these quiet times even though they are laced with pain. I could say that I really crave the quiet. These periods are the bread of life for me. It is during these moments that I hear the things that normally get drown out by the noise of daily life around me. Like the sound of my boy purring; or the sound of a gentle breeze rustling the leaves of the poplars out back. Or the sounds of the birds as they bath in the fern grotto. Sometimes I think I really should live out in the country where it is quiet all the time. I actually dreamt about that a lot before Sylvia died. Still do. It was something I wanted to do for me and the kids. Have a modest house on couple of acres with a proper garden. Where I could see my kids romping about, rolling in the grass, tummies pointing towards the sky. I wanted to take walks with them just like we did here in the halls outside my apartment.

Sylvia loved our walkabouts when I came home from work. And so did I. Almost every time I would look down visualizing us out in our country garden. Our toes damp with morning dew while we were surrounded by the sweet aroma of damp earth. It was sometime I wanted to give to her and her brother. The gift of the outdoors. The gift of nature. The one thing that I could not give them here.

Now I will never have that chance.

Just another facet of my deep and abiding grief.

I try to stay busy these days, trying as much as I can to fend off the pain. I have to say that it isn't working. Not that I thought it would anyways.

There is no easy out for getting rid of the pallor of death. No magic wand to wave about the air. No soap that will wash away the pain.

Just life as it is now. Without my girl.

I wonder if the glaucoma will ever disappear of it's own accord? That in time I will see things as they were, not as they are now.

People tell me that I will heal. That it gets easier in time. I don't know though. I suspect that I will never get that peace back. The one I had in those moments of solitude with my kids by my side.

That's the problem with death.

It's so final.

You can never go back.

No matter how much you want to.

Or need to.