Aghast

Everywhere I turn, everything I read, people I speak to who know these things have said I am doing well, remarkably well.  Am I?  I have days, moments, seconds that take me to a darkness I have never known, until now.  I listen, hear the stories of girls her age, their successes, their plans all taking form ...their lives stretched out before them.  I love those stories, I really do.  There is a joke in my house and with some of my friends that I think I'm applying to college, making plans for my future.  I love the whole process ...it's an adventure, a great time of discovery, exploration.  Phoebe and I were having fun with it.
If Phoebe had been locked in her room, refusing to share her life with us ...if, if, if.  I can't make sense of this today.  I've examined so many things, reasons.  They hold me for a while, give me sure footing ...and then it shifts.  I have NO idea why.  No one does.  Why is she dead?  How did this happen?  I wipe the tears away and more come ...I want to scratch my face until it burns with pain ...it would be far less than the sorrow that squeezes my heart.  I want to scream it all away ...I feel like an animal, caught in a trap.  Let me out of this nightmare.  In a book "No Time To Say Goodbye" by Carla Fine she shares that survivors of suicide experience the degree of horror those in concentration camps survived ...if they were lucky enough.  I am no expert on the Holocaust, but I can't imagine a fear, a sorrow, a suffering much worse than this.  The thing now is that it comes and goes.  I know that now.  But when it descends, the fog lifts and I see her absence.  Do you know what that's like?  "Oh, you don't know what she's been spared, what you've been spared"  People say in kindness.  Perhaps, I think.  But what about what I've lost ...the now, the her, my floppy bun girl, my singing girl, my boss me around girl, my fashion police girl ...my future with her, my Phoebe.  It can't be sugarcoated, sweetened.  Oh, its so much better this way.  Really?  Walk with me for a bit?  Then decide.  Should I wake in the morning, "Oh, thank goodness Phoebe's dead, my day will be much better now."  People don't know what to say ...they shouldn't, this is beyond what should happen.  Everyone has their own struggles, their own degree of suffering.  Should I say, "really, the cross you carry is so much better than life without it, you've been spared something so much worse."  I think people would look at me as cruel. 
We don't often think about words and their power.  I've thought of words I've said to people thinking they would bring comfort, but realizing later, they were like a dagger cutting a fresh wound, hurting them even more. I feel schizophrenic, all over the map with my emotions.  This is the life of agony.  I am horrified and stunned.  My daughter ended her life.  It could have been five minutes of desperation.  Phoebe is gone from me for as long as I walk the earth ...she is gone.  It will never be okay ....ever. 
I smile, I laugh, I sing, I play ...I do all those things ...with a broken heart pulling me down.  It is a fight to stay up, a battle worth fighting for my other kids ...my husband, myself.  It is the practice of rising up, of smiling, laughing, singing, playing ...the practice, day to day, that will make me stronger, allow me to live on.  I am growing stronger, I feel it already.  But I am not less sad, less lonely, less wanting of her.  I am just growing the strength to bare the weight of it all.
One of my ladies I care for who lost her own daughter many years ago said to me.  "It never gets easier, you just grow accustomed to it, that's all."  Yes, I see that's how it is.  I will grow accustomed to the constant companionship of sadness, sorrow.  It is a new way for me, not one I would choose.  I want her back, I want my Phoebe back....plain and simple. She occupies my heart and mind.  I cannot grasp her, hold her, hear her.
Around me are the living, the loving, the memory makers ...my source of joy, gratitude ...hope.  Why do they not consume most of me ...why am I stuck in the land of the lost.  I want to pass over.  Cross the bridge that will lead me to  the life around me.  Where is God's hand to help me?  Why has He left me alone?  To cross over is to leave her behind ...to admit her life here is over.  How can I leave her behind?  I have left her at the manger, and yet I want her back.  That longing, the emptiness escapes words ...it is bathed in emotion of a different kind ...undefinable ... it just is.  I look in the mirror and catch the glimpse of a woman aged, bags under eyes ....never there before.  I have aged ...life has drained from me.  Where is God? Where is the source of all life.
His hand comes in the form of friends.  First one, early on, a call.  I hold tight, a question asked, a forced smile ...the spilling of tears... the anger.  Why? Tender words ...words that confirm my struggle, my questions, my fears ...words I can hear ...echoes back to me that what is done is a nightmare.  Yes, tell me that, please don't tell me it is a gift, a blessing.  Please don't.
His hand comes again, another early call ...I sob, desperate, pleading for a reason to love this life.  Words.  Words given up from the heart.  Confirmation of my pain ...my struggle.  Words that say I hear you, I see you are in pain.  Words that say, "I want to take it for you ...if only I could."  "No ...not this,  you don't want this." I say. 
His hand comes again.  "I know I sound like a broken record ...you'll have to listen for at least a year."  "We'll listen for a lifetime" she says, the other nods.  No pressure ...no answers ...no advice ....just an open heart, willing to watch me struggle to live on.
These are the words I need ...the words a parent needs when their child has died so unnecessarily.  No pressure, no answers, no advice ...just an open heart willing to watch me struggle to live on ....and on.