A loss far greather than death.

Loss. There are so many forms of loss. The most obvious is death. From the first breath we take we begin the dying process. Our body immediately begins to age. Each breath is one second closer to death. But there are so many many other losses we have to endure in this life time. We lose friends, articles of clothing, contact lenses, teeth, hair and the list could go on. But with people there are a few other losses. Sometimes there is loss due to divorce. Two people who were so in love and could not bare to spend even moments apart begin to loathe the sight of each other. What once was enduring is now agonizing. The thought of being in the same room is so appalling that this couple so once in love is willing to rip their family apart and make the innocent children choose and suffer loss. To that child it is like death. The hope and future of their family is so dim they grapple with a loss so huge that it many times will affect them for life. We have loss in friends too. We share late night secrets and chocolate laden gripe sessions with people we cherish like they were our own blood. But with graduation, jobs, children, moves and general business of life we lose contact. We send Christmas cards with signatures dotted with hearts but throughout the rest of the year we never speak. That time seems so long ago and those girlish memories are like faded roses left to wilt and crumble. But there is still another loss of people that sometimes I feelis far worse than death itself. It is the loss of the person sitting right next to you. The far away look that stares right through you. The woman, the mom, the caregiver who now wakes up and wonders where she is. The one whose strength picked you up not just from physical falls but emotional caverns when no one else could reach you. The woman who held you tight when love seemed to slip through your hands with that first boyfriend and continued to hold you tight when you buried your first born son. The woman who knew all the answers and advice matched any columnist now sometimes forgets your name or how to make her feet move. Who some days says yes, a very nice lady was here yesterday and it was you. That loss creeps in like the fog from the ocean in the middle of a coal black night. It surrounds you before you know it and cuts off any recognition of the past, present or future. Once it is there it moves fast. Faster than you can hold it all in until it has consumed everything in its path. Then when it moves silently back to where it came from the damage is rampant. The worries and fears of how to rebuild, how to get some semblance of normalcy are gone and survivor mode sets in. How do you keep that person who managed a household and went to battle against so many to keep her family safe how do you get her to remember to lock the door, to eat, to take only one set of meds at a time or turn the phone off so you don't worry that something has happened and race over to find it sitting there, the world oblivious to the tone. How do you sleep at night thinking the one who tucked you into bed and said prayers over you might wander out into the night and never come back? How do you sleep? That loss is far greater. As you sit on the sidelines helpless to heal, helpless to make it all better. And watch the woman you love, admire and have worked so hard to keep alive is living without living. How do you sleep? How do you watch that woman slip away while sitting there right next to you? That loss is by far the greater loss. One in which you feel so helpless, so small, so weak so very very sad. I love you momma.