Move to the Side, Please

She was still warm.


How do I know this?  I forced this bitter truth out of someone who was on the scene and had actually been able to touch her, which I was not able to do.


This is a thought that plagues me day and night:  it stills my hands over my keyboard at work; it opens my eyes on my darkened bedroom in the wee hours of morning; it cues my right hand to cover my face at a moment's notice, a typical gesture of denial and despair in Nicole-body-language.


It is a painful and senseless cycle.  The thought comes; I ruminate on it; it gives birth to other painful memories; my mood changes for the worst.


What earthly good does this do me?


Yes, it happened.  She was still warm.  Ruminating on this does not change the past to a better outcome.  She still does not live.  It does me as little good as it's done me all this years to be stuck on the fact that her biological father would not accept help for his illness so we could be a family.  How many decades exactly does it take to realize you cannot change anyone but yourself?  Or that you cannot change a situation, but only your reaction to it?


I wrote she was still warm on a page in the coping section of my planner.  It is safely captured.  I have mourned this truth in my heart.  Now when the thought comes to my mind, I gently push it to the side- not out of disrespect to my girl, but to honor her.


I am not always a graceful woman.  And sometimes, especially with the hardest lessons of life, I can be a slow learner.  That is okay.  Who said progress has to be a straight and perfectly fluid line?  This grief thing is full of zig-zags. 


Ironically, that is a movement pattern I am already well-versed in.  Challenges can be huge, but if you can stagger forward one jerky step at a time...guess what?  You're still in motion.