The Winter Solstice. The longest night. How very appropriate, to end this calendar year honoring the longest night and the darkest half of the year. Since losing Christina, I have been wandering in a darkness - a place I've never been before. Oh I've been in dark places, but not THIS dark place.
To those on the outside, looking in, I must seem fine. You know: Well-adjusted, coping with the loss, managing the tragedy. But inside...in the basement of my soul...there lies the scream, the tears, the guilt, the agony, and the little girl who - like Christina - wants her mommy. How ironic: by taking her life, she left ME hanging.
And it's been a long night. A long, restless, sleepless night. Sure, I still accomplish things: the house is clean, a semester has been successfully completed, I periodically wash the gray right out of my hair; but have I accomplished my grief??
So I wander through this darkness, searching desperately for the Light that I once held as if I owned it. Searching, as I wander, for a sign. And inviting, tempting, daring, the paranormal. I get nothing. Void. Empty spaces.
"Christina, where ARE you?!" My voice echoes in the emptiness. Nothingness. I conclude that it's all a fabrication; since the beginning of time we have collectively struggled with the not-knowing. What happens when we die?? And so we've fabricated stories to make ourselves feel better. "She's an angel in heaven now." Or so I've been told in loving, consoling tones. "God has her now." Really?? Why did he take her in the first place? No. When we die, there is nothing, and thus the empty spaces. No reply.
I've been told to be patient; she'll contact me from the other side, eventually. I've been advised to notice the small things...little signs, like a song I hear or a scent that suddenly appears. Really? And if I step on a crack, will I break my mother's back? Should I cross my fingers, just for luck? And what about that rabbit's foot and my silver dice...if I carry those around, maybe THAT will help too.
It's been suggested that perhaps my shattered sense of all-things-spiritual is actually Christina and that she is telling me, from the other side, that my former beliefs were wrong. Really?? Why wouldn't God just tell me directly? He's done it before...supposedly.
The Longest Night.
I try to hold on to the scientific fact that the longest night is followed by the slow return of the Light and attempt to apply it philosophically to my own Dark Night: after a time, the Light will return and warm me once again. Rebirth always follows the dead/dark time. I long to be reborn. I want to come back to life. But it is not time, yet. This continues to be a time of Dark Rumination for me. The record must be played and played and played until the grooves are well-worn and deeply engraved and I know the lyrics by heart. And so, like a needle on a LP, I continue to wander in circles, digging deeper each time around, creating static, and entrenching myself, but all the while, still hanging there, as she was on That Morning: warm, but lifeless and yet, resolved in her exit.
And my first response remains: "WHY Baby Girl?? WHY??"
