Anxiety. Grabbing your chest in a tight ball. Stealing your breath from you. Stealing your sleep and your peace and your energy.
I’ve been down in Texas a few days visiting for a close friend’s wedding I’m in and each morning I’ve woken up before the sun with anxiety. Anxious about being back home for only a short time. That I am but 3 hours drive from the cemetery where Drew is buried and I will not be able to go there. To the place that is most sacred to me. Standing on the beach where I grew up – the place my soul is connected to more than anywhere else on this earth, and knowing that I have to leave it again already tomorrow.
Anxious that I will only see friends and family for a few hours each. And then must say goodbye again, not knowing when I will see any of them again. Anxious about my friend’s wedding in which all sorts of things have gone horribly wrong and I feel helpless and unable to do anything about it. Thinking about this kind of milestone in my own life – which will no doubt bring more layers of grief and sadness since I never got to marry Drew. There is no way around it, this is hard.
It’s just hard to turn off my brain right now with so much going on around me. So much that reminds me of home, that makes me feel comfortable in my own skin. Makes me feel connected to who I am and to my past and to my roots.
It’s not to say it hasn’t been a wonderful trip. It has been incredible to see a handful of my very favorite people on earth and for Mike and Shelby to finally meet the last of my siblings. To see his kids and Shelby playing all day on the beach together and getting along so well. To laugh and share stories and just sit around together with the people who feel like home to me.
But just like everything now adays… It is tinged with a sadness and a grieving. It is colored with anxiety and fear about more death. I hate the fact that one of the first things I thought of when I saw my brother’s face yesterday for the first time in over a year, was “is this the last time I will ever see you?” Not because he is sick. Not because anything is wrong at all. But because I know that I don’t know when it will happen. When I will lose him, or my sister, or my closest friends, or Mike. And sometimes it is years between our visits
The waiting is the hardest part. The knowing that “it” will eventually come, and the not knowing when. I suppose the good part of that is that I haven’t taken a moment of it for granted. I’ve had my time in the morning to break down, have a good solid cry, and then embraced all the precious things and people in the rest of my time. Not sleeping well has meant seeing the sun come up in my favorite place ever. So I’m trying my best to use these feelings to help me appreciate it all more deeply, but it’s still just so damn hard sometimes.
