Today I Fell

Tim found some old pictures of the kids, Gizmo, and Oliver while rummaging through his toolbox, and brought them in the house to show me.   Jacob's pics were babyhood to toddler,all wise eyes and sweater vests, and Cory was nine or ten, pre-braces and demure.  We had pictures of her and her cat, Church, taken on Pet Day, and the others were of Cory holding her first American Girl Doll, Josefina.  I never look at pictures of Cory as a child.  They are just too painful to see.

  As I looked these over, I couldn't help but realize that Cory had been buried with Josefina, and her cat, Church, was buried right beside her after her death.  They're all at the cemetery together right now; yep, that's how that story ended.  Really?  What kind of screwed up plan is that?  Anger...no, fury descended on me, a second skin.  The outrage...the total indignation...the disdain at whomever or Whomever allowed this to happen...it just envelopes my entire being.  It's exhausting.

Scrolling through more recent pics on my facebook page yesterday, I stopped cold at the Easter picture of her and Jake, swallowing past the lump in my throat to see her in the dress she'd been buried in.  Oh.  I touched the screen, and the blackness just rushed in.  The anger was gone, and under it, of course, was the old familiar hurt.  Any mild reprieve from this awful mess that I've felt in the last few days was gone in that instant.  You just...lose your place.

“I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal.”

― Vita Sackville-West