Tragedy is silence.

There are times when my emotions still feel like a hijacking. Today, seeing pictures and videos that Tina posted of the girls (my nieces) at the beach brought up grief that felt insurmountable for a time in the car. Then I remembered, that's what emotions do. They swell and recede, just like the ocean. Just like that salty expanse, I sometimes lose my bearings while I'm thrashed around beneath the surface, and a moment feels like forever while I'm waiting to get my next breath. When I am inside it, it feels exactly like being controlled by something much bigger, stronger, and more powerful than I'll ever be. My instincts are both to fight it and to succumb. I watch my attempts to right my position, kicking for the surface at times and also giving in and allowing the wave to just take me where it will. Both are necessary for survival. 

There are moments when her absence is so profound, I can't breathe. I do think being physically removed from my family has allowed me to become frozen in the loss of her. I'm not there day in and day out watching the girls grow, live and persevere. When I hear Liv's laughter, I reflexively join in, but am ambushed by tears and a throat that closes on itself. When I miss her so much, why does seeing and hearing her leave me so decimated? My grief feels so endless, my anger so dense, the questions immeasurable. 

We had 2 lifetimes together. 2 lifetimes during which to say all the things, ask all the questions, right all the wrongs. In the last 2 years, we danced this painful, awkward, imprisoned dance that I hate. I hated it then, and I hate it now. But I couldn't discern where my entitlement ended and her self preservation began, and so when she swayed left, we went left. There were times that it felt like grace, shamefully more moments that resentment dripped from my very cells. 

You think that when you know the end is near, you will make certain choices. What's easily forgotten is that it isn't only an ending for you, but for every extension of you. Every person you loved into being; every human who shares your memories and each person who held still undreamed plans with you - it's a thousand endings, in a thousand ways, for more people than you will ever realize...unless, that is, you are the one left breathing. If you are the one standing in a cold, gorgeous building receiving hugs, wiping tears, and holding your children up to see over the edge of the casket, you watch and hear all the hearts breaking at once around you. You drown in it. 

I'm learning that tragedy and silence have the exact same address, and that feels like too major an epiphany to squander.