I’m back in Kona after a whirlwind trip across two very large ponds. Being that it is 11 hours time difference between Hawaii and the UK, I am still suffering the lag, but it’s getting better. It was well worth it, both for time with my boyfriend’s family, and refreshing the spirit during a time of looming change in my reality. So now back to the grind.
And back to a cold, hard reality as well. Hearing about the shooting in Las Vegas chilled me to the bone. In years past, when Mike was alive, we used to come together during moments like that, during the other horror shows we as humans have lived through during the years of our marriage, from 9/11 to Sandy Hook. We would talk about what we really thought happened…we would try and translate the news into some language we could comprehend. Really for me, having his wisdom, his soothing presence, his protection perhaps, made me so much less fearful, both for myself, and the world.
So while I watched it all in horror and prayed for the people affected, those who were lost and their families, I also found myself pulling back into myself.
In a conversation with my elder stepdaughter the next day, who told me that her nephew had been at that concert with his girlfriend, that they were terrorized but alive, I found myself relating to her what I just wrote here. Reminding her how it was when her dad was alive, how we would somehow survive such terribleness under the great and calming umbrella of his being. How since he’s died, I’ve drawn myself into a sort of bubble.
This bubble has expanded and condensed, sometimes more inclusive and airy, other times more hard, dense and dark. But it has always been there. My entire world is different without him. How I speak, what thoughts I share, decisions I make, even how I feel about life and this world altogether. My faith in so many things was rattled to its core when I found him dead that morning in early 2013, and no matter of things on this earth can every change that, I don’t think.
Maybe Mike was my bubble, in some way. He was my life for so long…when he died I felt exposed. Alone in a frightening, shivering way. So I closed myself in, eventually, in those early weeks and months after his death, into my own solitary safe place, misnomer as that may be. That’s not to say that I don’t share my life with others, because I do, but that part of me? That part of me that was with Mike? She is very concealed. Very inward, and very quiet now.
It’s just how I have coped, I guess, and it wasn’t until this horror in Vegas that I’ve realized that in so many words. God Speed to all the beautiful souls so uselessly lost, and the deepest condolences to loved ones who must suffer grief in this most terrible way. I send healing love to our country, and our planet. It needs it.