Every day I wake up with a hole in my heart. Maybe ”hole” isn’t the word for it. It feels as if half my heart’s been ripped out.
Yet the void inside my heart aches, like they say an arm or a leg still “aches” even after it’s been amputated. Phantom limbs. Phantom pains.
The first thing I thought when I woke up this morning was, “Oh, I’m awake. And Bobby’s gone.” I don’t know why the sensation is an ache in the heart, but that’s where it always is.
I look out the window and know I have to get up, but I don’t feel like doing anything. Half the reason for doing anything in this world seems to have disappeared. If I can’t tell him about it and hear his reaction, what’s the point?
I’m going to get up. I’m going to get on with my day. I’ll be able to forget for periods of time. But I’m experiencing what his friend Rollie said during the funeral: “It’s going to be hard to live in a world without Bobby.”
It’s a paradox, that you, YOU, make me cry.
Lots of love to both of you.
Dear Rachel, I cannot avoid writing some words and try to make you feel a little bit better. Two days ago I received a letter from my aunt from Seattle. She is 78 and his son passed away this last January. Two days ago he would have turn into his fifties. She writes me that pain comes like waves, as Joan Didion (Sacramento, Ca) said in her book The Year of Magical Thinking. My aunt told me that she watched the play of the book. There was no place for tears but for smiles( amazing)… maybe is time for reading and find in other’s examples a litte bit of consolation…
Thank you, my Central California friend. I’m very sorry about the death of your cousin… so young, on top of it! I feel for your aunt. That’s true about the waves of pain, because they overwhelm you and pull you under, like strong waves on a beach. I’ll check out that book, thank you for all your thoughts and support.
Its hard for me to express myself onto the loss of someone you love that much, but I’m trying to give a go to it…
When I lost my grandpa, god knows we loved him so much, he was a musician and both my brother and me inherited this passion from him, my mother and sister also inherited his love for the art and their ways of expresing it are writing and painting. By the time of his loss, I was so disconected from music I hardly ever knew who I were or where I was standing in my feet. I’ve passed several years separated from this passion, until that day, I felt really bad about it, it was like I had betrayed both my grandpa and myself for that, and I made a promise I would inmediately get back to it and never leave it again, and I carry my grandpa in every single action or thought in my life, I talk to him at nights, I thank him for everything that is happening to me at the moment, and (well this was out of my crazy way of being), I’ve tattoed the G Key in my shoulder as a way to “sing in stone” this promise, that G Key is my grandpa, very very close to the heart, same as music. And I find comfort on thinking I have him in my life, in me on a daily basis. And I feel happy for this, cause I know, that wherever he is, that place is my heart.
I don’t know it these words will make it for you but, I think that you always had and will always have uncle Bobby in your heart and in everything you do, and I cant tell, if people here loves you like we do, Uncle is loving you more than any living soul in the world, and he’s right beside you
Lotsa love to you!
I just cried my ass off reading what you wrote about your Gramps. What a beautiful story. I’m sure a lot of people will relate to it as well. Thank you, Barb!
You know Rachel, THIS show must go on!!!