Life is a Trigger

You may have noticed that it's been winter all year here at Conceiving Hope.

Sometimes life is permeated with a grey, foggy haze that doesn't lift. That's the best way to describe 2016. The death of a parent. The death of another child. The death of an aunt. The death of a friend. A new diagnosis - this time a disease brought on by pregnancy itself. And so winter wasn't coming, it just never left.

I'm mostly still back at January 22nd, even now. Remembering every bit of that morning before I knew my world had changed.... remembering a peace that was a lie. Freshly fallen snow that morning, a hot cup of tea, a slow start to the day, and time spent soaking it in. Yet far away, the loss of a parent in those same moments. It's strikes me even now how eerily silent it was that morning. Hauntingly so, as crystals formed, and snow flakes settled and everything in the world was frozen for a moment...

Grief is a strange sensation. Like the snow that morning, it is mostly silent - but discernibly there. And after the snow, it's even like the feel of sticky morning dew on bare skin in springtime. Or like a thick, hot breath inwards on a particularly humid summer evening. Or that first crisp scent of Autumn in the air that catches your nose.

They are all so distinct, aren't they? Familiar, yet new. Recognizable, yet different. There, yet not really. The deafening quiet of that snowy morning and particularly the change of the seasons this year are some of the most poignant to me still, as I think back on the loss. The world kept going, but I did not. And loss upon loss, I became numb. I didn't even keep up motions in my numbness. I just was. Or am. Or something...

In 2016, all of life has seemed a trigger. Maybe it's hope delayed? Or maybe this is some Phoenix metaphor where I have to be burned to ashes before some dramatic rebirth. Perhaps my Hashimoto's is conjuring up exactly that scenario. I'm not sure, nor does it really matter much which it is. I just am. Or whatever is left of me, anyway.

Losing a parent is so very different than losing a child. Almost everyone can relate to one, and very few can relate to the other. Yes, losing a parent is expected at some point, but even in the shared experience - the reality of it is utterly unique and unshareable.

I buried my father on my birthday. And since the year I was born, it always snows that day. It did that day too. I'm not sure how it's 8 months past that day already, but it is. I'm still in winter, stuck in January, and the rest of you kept going.