Wednesday, June 10, 2015

But God Meant it for Good


An unrecognizable emotion flounders deep in my mind and heart. It inks my dreams turning them into anxious foreboding. 

No label presents itself.

What sort of creature haunts my inner being?

Upon description my husband places a moniker that seems correct.

Abandonment?

My mom died a dozen days ago. There is peace and even relief with her passing as it was expected; there was verbal closure lasting eight years, and her suffering is no more. I know I will miss her, and I know the days, months, years ahead will be altered, weird.

Those emotions I recognize. They are appreciated. They inform me.

But this slithering nameless entity I do not know. It is not appreciated. It does not inform of anything but danger. It does not seem attached to my mother's passing.

Abandonment?

I think my husband accurately deduces the presence.

My mother was the magnet around whom her children clung.

She is no more.

Her children - without her pull - regroup, and just as it was in childhood, so it is now. I am here. Two of the other three are together there. Way over there, purposefully out of my reach. Two whom I thought were my solid rocks, now intentionally cold and silent to my requests for conversation and connection. They grieve together leaving me to grieve alone, without them and their shared memories, alone in my attempts to come to grips with our common loss.

I have been Cut Free, like an unwanted pest.

Instead of focusing on the Cut, I shall focus on the Free.

Sometimes it is a gift when people walk away. A gift of freedom, because, to be honest, more that is different than is same reigns in the relationships anyway.

Abandonment horrifies. At first.

But, to a rose-colored mind such as mine, being cut free from something that is unkind, inconsiderate, and rude still feels like cruel dismissal and posturing. Now that the situation's reality is noticed and accepted, relief enters. And gratitude. 

As if hunkering in a lifeboat cut free from a sinking Titanic, horror and relief bubble up all at once. All that seemed safe is gone! But the safety was an illusion, the damage irreparable, the glory, pride, and luxury dropping out of sight into the dark and pressured abyss.

My tiny lifeboat, however, is free to correct its balance on life's open sea, to begin again, to sail toward fresh sunrises and sunsets, accompanied by other survivors, to sail, infused with a pleasant restorative peace which gently fills the void where once resided those who do not understand. 

Yes, I've been abandoned. 

But all is well.

I will fondly remember the good times while remaining saddened by this unhappy - though inevitable - parting, this dreaded cutting away of people I have long and deeply loved, however unreal those connections have turned out to be. 

Abandonment is named. The dark presence tamed.

Life makes sense again.