Ice Floes

I used to think; that is, before the after; that grief was much like a river.  That once I was thrown from my familiar place of land; I needed to struggle against the current and swim to the other side to find a new land to live.  But now that I find myself in this water; I realize that grief is more like the sea.  I used to be a California girl; feet in the sand, basking in the sun.  Now I am a polar bear in the Arctic Sea drifting on a melting ice floe.  There is no such thing as land anymore; so I no longer look for it.  I look out across the horizon and to the Great Bear constellation, which does not set in this Arctic place.    

Waves

My sorrow floods over me and rushes me into Katie.  My sadness collides with my love for her.  I gasp and breathe her into my being.  I am grateful Katie is my daughter.  Blessed by her presence in my life.  I smile.  Then I remember.  I cry.  My loss and love tumble me in the waves.  I am caught up in the under current.  The wave is the moment and the ocean is eternity.  The moment takes form and shape as a wave; then returns to the ocean; into eternity.  The loss; this moment; is now, but my love for Katie is constant; consistent like she is, like the surf.  The ocean repeatingly forms into waves then returns into the cohesion of the water.  My sadness washes over me, smoothing my broken, jagged edges.  Polishing me, making me beach glass.   I love you Katie infinity times infinity.  You are wrong.  I love you more.     

Uncertainty

I struggle with uncertainty.  I rage war on randomness.  I fight for order and proper patterns.  I loath chaos.  My obsession with systematic arrangement is futile and diversionary.  It is so paradoxical, because what I really want is to reach into the emptiness and make it malleable.  I want to create a reality which contains a happy, healthy, physically formed Katie.  The truth is; albeit, I battle with uncertainty; it is not my enemy. It is certainty that I am furious with; certainty that burns my throat and stings my eyes and pierces my heart.  It is the certainty; that one cold unchangeable fact that Katie no longer has a body; that I hate.  If that could only become a mutable uncertainty that I could change, then I would happy with all the other uncertainties in my life.  Revel in them.  Rejoice that life is ever changing.  But no, alas, I do not have that choice.  I am angry at my choice-less world.  Life is uncertain.  Death is the only real certainty.  There is no solace in certainty.