Returning To My Truth

Day 457.

I’m back, 36,000 feet in the air, homeward bound.

I awake suddenly, panicked and remember that Luke is dead.

I sob.

Did I forget?

Did I forget whilst I was sleeping?

Did I dream of him alive and feel the full weight of his loss upon waking?

If I suddenly remembered that Luke is dead, I must have forgotten.

Or did I just lose the grim truth momentarily?

But the return of the truth brings grief anew, giant round tears flow so keenly down my face.

I awoke with a panic attack and then the truth hit me.

Did I dream about my boy?

Was I in his presence, or did I just drop into a new strange grief phase?

How cruel a reminder to be awoken by a panic attack and to be fully plunged into the agonizing truth about my life.

Luke has been dead 15 months. It’s only been 15 months of this pain?

How can I ever manage the rest of my life feeling this way?

How can I ever manage to continue to support Luke and George and Adam?

I’ve been away for almost a month over Christmas.

I have laughed and enjoyed moments.

This arousal from a sleep and indeed from a world, however fleeting, where Luke was not dead, is harsh.

But as I fly back to LA, the holiday is over physically and mentally.

I am going back to my life. A life with much good in it, but the loss of my child, my boy, my family as it was, overshadows and drowns that good.

The hell in which I live, from which I endeavor to do good.

At some point I’ll always have to return to the agony of my life, my grief, which I endure, so that those around me need not be hurt further by my exit.