Friday, September 23, 2005

Waves.

I feel compelled. That's the only thing I can come up with to describe how I feel that makes any sense to me.

The reality that he is gone comes in waves. For a while I am fine and going about the business of life and then I'll think of him, of what his last days must have been like, of the lonesome agony his wife must be suffering, of his lying deep in the hard, cold earth… and I lose it.

For reasons I can't explain I looked at his obituary and as I knew it would, it knocked the breath out of me. In stark black and white I read his end of life biography. It was more than I could stand. Strangely enough, his family chose a picture from the time period when he and I were very close for use in his online memorial and when I saw it, I can't even express what it did to me.

There he was again, exactly as I remembered him to be. I shouldn't have looked.

I whisper to him during the day and at night, I remember who he was and I wonder where he is. I find that at a time when I most need to believe in the existence of Heaven I am suddenly questioning whether maybe the end really is the end. Why is that? The idea that he is in the ground somewhere far away is so, so painful. I desperately need to believe that he is not there at all, but rather some place unseen and spectacular. Why is that so hard to accept as fact now, as previously I have always accepted it to be?

I spent yesterday morning with a close by friend who I knew would be a good listener and would have something wise to impart. I didn't want to be alone at the moment when my far away friend was buried.

"It's ok to be mad at God," he told me. "It's ok to question what's going on." I knew that's what he would say and I suppose that's exactly what I wanted him to say. We sat and talked and ate pie and he made me feel better. But as we visited, I couldn't help but hope I am doing and saying all the things that I should so that I don't suffer the should-haves if he would go before I do. He's a good and faithful friend and I've never been more conscious of the fact that the time to tell someone what they mean to you is always now.

Compelled.

I am compelled to say I love you. I am compelled to question God. I am compelled to cry. I am compelled to write. I am compelled to do something that would make him proud of me. I am compelled to search. I am compelled to wonder.

I am compelled.


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