If You've Ever Lost Someone....

........you know the feeling.

It begins at first light, as you awaken, slowly being roused back to consciousness by forces who don’t seem to understand that you simply don’t want to be awakened, that you don’t want to be conscious, for in consciousness lies awareness and, in awareness, another round of having to face that which you would give all you own to not have to face.

That’s, of course, assuming that you were able to sleep in the first place.

Once you are aware, though, the feeling resumes its hold.

And you marvel and resent, at the same time, how much of a grip emptiness can have on you.

It seems a conflict, a paradox, a cruel joke being played on you by the forces of nature or the gods or whomever it is that has inflicted this terrible, aching wound on your soul.

Empty means there’s nothing there.
So how is it that you can feel it so intensely?

And there is no cure, no quick fix, no over the counter medication that will make you stop feeling the emptiness. It becomes a part of you, as if somehow your emotions could get migraines and although you can minimize the suffering with certain atmospheres and efforts, it aches, at some level, every minute of every day.

It never goes away. At best, you simply learn to live with it.
Even if, in that place where you say things only to yourself, you cry out that this is not living.

It is merely, and only, the physical functions of life.

Then there is the space.
Differentiated from the emptiness inside you by being the emptiness all around you, the space newly and unexpectedly created, the crater in your once unscarred world.

The bed that now seems almost obscenely large.

The closet that suddenly has more room than you will ever think about needing.

The empty chair at the dining room table.

Every room in the house, once warm and welcoming, now cold and indifferent and, worse, offering no shelter or haven from the feeling, no sanctuary from the aching, no relief from the despair, for there are no doors that can be shut, no windows that can be closed, no drapes that can be drawn that can blind you to that which exists in the very center of your own heart.

Then, to add insult to injury and heartache to heartbreak, everything sparks a memory and more pain.

Everything.

Every song on the radio, every program on the television, every commercial on every program on the television, every title on every book on the shelves of bookcases in the rooms you shared, every photograph of anything taken during the exquisite days your lives were intertwined, every ring of the telephone, every cup of coffee poured from the coffeemaker you took turns preparing the night before, every cup coming in or out of the dishwasher that you used at one time or another to pour that coffee and take upstairs as a gesture of love and romance, every key on the key ring that you could never seem to find without asking for help, every kicking on and off of the heat pump or air conditioning compressor that made it either too hot or too cold for one of you, sending you rolling apart for relief in the midst of summer, rolling you closer together for warmth in the dead of winter, every bite of Chinese food from the carry out place you called on those Saturday nights that going out was overruled in favor of candlelight, privacy and tender, but urgent, caresses in the night, every creak of the stairs of the guy living next door that made you quiet your lovemaking for just a moment lest you be discovered and, for some silly stupid reason, made to feel self conscious, every piece of clothing, every piece of paper, every sound, every scent, every single part of your existence a monument to the sweet joys of having had someone around you, beside you, inside you so completely and the horrific agony of losing them.

Everything.

Then come the words of comfort.

Friends, family, other loved ones who offer their best, most well intended platitudes.

Time will heal your wound. Be grateful for the time you had. You will pull through. You will have happy times again. Life will go on. Have faith.

All inevitably good advice meant to somehow make you feel better but just as inevitably having the opposite effect.

You don’t want to feel better.

You want this to have not happened.

Friends, family and other loved ones cannot offer that.
It is not within their power to offer it.

So you somehow find the smile and you thank them with your best “I appreciate you” tone of voice.

While inside your head and heart you want them to just shut the hell up.

Because you have still one more assault on your soul to endure.

Trying to somehow live with the loss.
And knowing that no one has died.

That there has been no physical flaw that suddenly killed, no lingering illness ending in blessed release, no midnight phone call bringing dark news of a terrible accident, there has been no sending of flowers, no sympathy cards, no viewing, no wake, no funeral, no burial, no long drive back from the cemetery.

There are only two people, best friends, partners, lovers, totally and irrevocably connected, body, heart and soul.

Who, in the end, after days and nights and days and nights of tears and talk, struggle and searching, hoping and praying, trying and failing, simply could not make it work.

And had to let each other go to spare each other pain.

Pain to forever be replaced with the emptiness.

Without even the mercy of closure that eventually comes with a loved one dying.

For each night of your life remaining ends with the profane truth that somewhere on the earth lives a heart still beating in tandem with yours, still breathing in rhythm with your own breaths, still just a walk or car ride or plane trip away from being in that bed…or empty dining room chair…or rooms.

Each night remaining ends with the profane truth…

As you close your eyes and wait for sleep to mercifully come.

If you can sleep at all.

If you’ve ever lost someone... you know the feeling.