Releasing Distracted Grief

Day 610.

It’s the wee small hours of this day.

I’ve had body work today, my chest and heart so braced that it took a tirade of adjustments to free.

What am I bracing for? What am I resisting so?

Free and able to move despite the weakness of my heart, I now know what I am bracing so hard to resist. A torrent of tears and longing - that’s what.

Released by the body work and triggered into action by the images of a mother reunited with her son.

I sat and watched a TV drama about JP Getty’s kidnapping. In truth, I was watching because the actor is so like Luke. It’s like he’s in the room, tall and leggy, with kind blue eyes, full lips, and a lovely grin - and a mass of curls.

For the hours that I watched, he was Luke.

I know the story, I know what happens and yet I did not see it coming and it exploded my heart.

The scene when his mother is reunited with her son. “My boy! My beautiful boy!” she cries as she rushes into his arms, examines his face and holds him tight, sobbing. I broke. On my screen is the thing I long for most.

The tears that I have not shed, because I am working so hard on getting the book ready. A book about my grief, and yet it’s production has blocked my current grief, unvisited for the past weeks, held at bay by bracing so hard that I displaced my bones and contorted my body into physical agony, and now it comes upon me all at once. I submit to it now, and here I am back in my journal.

Luke’s birthday approaches - his due date is tomorrow. How different I was 25 years ago, full of him, my body contorted then in a different way, in expectancy of him, rather than in the loss of him.

Reminded that all the diversions in the world will not keep me from my suffering. In an almost biblical sense, I hope that this suffering is indeed the gift I give him to save us from suffering this again in another life, and to save others from the same. Does it make it better? - No But it gives it purpose. A fragile concept, but it’s all I have - that and memories, both sweet and sour. But I cherish them all the same. Broken forever,

I weep. Sitting in solitude, on the table outside, feet on chair, cigarette in hand. I weep.