Depths of Loneliness

"Lonely people have enthusiasms which cannot always be explained.  When something strikes them as funny, the intensity and length of their laughter mirrors the depth of their loneliness, and they are capable of laughing like hyenas.  When something touches their emotions, it runs through them like Paul Revere, awakening feelings that gather intro great armies."
- Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale


It's been almost a year since she left this world.  And the pain of it all is still as fresh and close as it was the day I heard the news.  How can a year without her have gone by so quickly?

The above quote is one of the most accurate things that I've ever read in my life.  And it describes me perfectly.  There have been times this past year when I, or a family member, has told a joke, or something humourous has occurred.  It's funny.  We laugh.  I laugh.  But when others have begun to cease laughing, I'm still going.  I'm laughing as though whatever has been done or said is the most hilarious thing on earth.  Tears are coming out of my eyes.  And I can't stop laughing.  Not because I think it's so funny, but because I just can't.  In the midst of this laughter, there's a moment when I think I'll lose it.  Go straight from laughing to sobbing uncontrollably because the grief is so great.

I have never understood people who have dealt with the death of a close loved one, speaking about how they wanted to talk to them about something, or share something funny, and they pick up the phone to call them, only to suddenly remember that they can't do that anymore.  How can you mistake the fact that they are permanently gone?  That you can no longer see them, hear them, touch them, speak to them?

Yet...I have found myself in a similar mindset.  Not thinking, 'Oh, I should tell her that I have a job now!' but, 'I wish I could tell her I have a job now.  I know she would make it a point to stop by and see me.'  How I used to hate having family come to my work place.  Now I would give up anything to see her again.

I don't cry very often.  And I have never involuntarily cried.  Frankly, I don't see how that's possible.  You know how sometimes the wind is blowing against you, or your eyes are really dry from a lack of sleep, and your eyes start watering?  I have neither stood in such a wind, nor have my eyes been dry from a lack of sleep.  But these past few days, I have found myself standing at work, or sitting at home, and all of a sudden, a few tears fall from my eyes.  Tears, not watering eyes.  (I assure you, I can tell the difference.)  I do not understand how or why this conundrum is occurring.  It's a tad frustrating, and inconvenient.  But perhaps it is due to the fact that it is July, and the one-year mark is close by.  Perhaps.

I am tired.  Of so many things.  Of a heavy heart that is broken.  Of fighting sadness every morning when I wake up.  Of constantly remembering the day I heard the news that she had exited the world, and how I tried to be strong.  And failed.  And how I will never hear her call me "Aimee Joy" again.


"Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything."
- C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed