Dealing with loss

I have oftened wondered, in the years that have passed since Daddy David died, if I have become calloused. Indifferent.

During the first few years after he died, something would bump up against the memories every so often and cause the wound to re-open. A song. A smell. A glimpse of something.

This morning, I sit at my computer and sift through the emails and news stories about the fires, and the loss. There are so many in our town who experienced wildfire devastation in 2003, and it has formed a binding tie of sorts with those who are experiencing it now for the first time.

As I write I am listening to Sarah MacLachlan's Wintersong and realizing that it is touching that vein of loss deep inside me. But I do not cry. Rather, it speaks to a deep pain that has become part of my foundation; a pillar of who I am. An experience that has shaped my values and goals, and affected my view of the world. It is at the same time awful and sweet, tender and devastating, this response that I feel.

When I was young, people told me that time would heal my wounds and the pain would go away. What I know now is that, while time does dull the sharpness of the pain, it never does go away. It dulls for awhile until one day you wake up and realize that The Event has ceased to exist, and in its place is a new fabric of one's life, with a new thread woven through.

We all have our own tapestry. Some threads are our own; others we share.

These are the ties that bind us.