And I'm In the Thick of It...

Okay.  So.  Yeah.

I'm finding it difficult to write.  Again.

For some time, pain lingered under the surface like a dull ache, to emerge more fully at intervals, accompanied by a sick sinking feeling in the gut.

Now, it's as though it's become absorbed into me and I don't notice it so much a lot of the time.  I still get that gut feeling now and then, but not as frequently.


When I think I might write something about how I'm doing, I often find I either don't know or can't express it or don't want to.  None of it seems to make any difference anyway to me right now.

I also feel a need to go back through and try to respond in some way to the things that people said in response from the beginning of all this.  But I'm finding it overwhelming of late, in a painful sort of way.  I can be feeling just fine and then induce melancholy by sitting down to take on any of these tasks.  So I put them off.  I know it's probably a phase I'm going through.  I'll be glad when it's over.

I keep thinking of "I'm going back to the start," from a song someone referenced after his death by Coldplay which I don't recall having heard before this, but which I've listened to repeatedly since.  Not that I literally want to go back -- I have no desire to live it over again, no way -- but I just go over things in my mind, to try to find some sense of closure or something.

But, I ask myself, the start of what?  Which start?  Back to when I became aware of his death, to when Dad spoke those impossible words?  Or before that, to the when and where and how of his death, to the fateful intersection, to stand there virtually through the amazing (and scary) Google maps and be where he was without being there?  (Yeah, I've done that.) Or back to the night he was born, when Dad came home and told Dylan and me we had a baby brother?  Or back to the start of me... "Oh, if only my life were more like 1983..." Which wasn't the start of me, but I think of that song too (John Mayer).  And I think, what is it that I'm doing with all this?  What am I seeking?

But I know.  And I know it's pointless.  I'll never find him.  Not here.  "Now there's a wall between us, somethin' that's been lost..."  But my heart hasn't fully realized that yet. 

So I just keep going on.  And I don't know how much more I'll write here about him, at least for a while.  Because here I am all teary-eyed, and I was at least sort of okay before I started writing.  And my blog isn't supposed to be a form of torture.  For me, or for you.  I know it hasn't exactly been encouraging lately.

I'm going to write about other things.  Because I do think about other things.  I have to anyway, even when I don't want to.  I have five children.  So when I can think at all ;), I have a lot more to think about than all this sentimentality for sure.  I don't sit around crying all the time.  I can still laugh, too.  hahaha  There, see? ;) 

Not that I won't still write about Clint, and missing him.  I probably will.  And there's one little part of me that hesitates, that doesn't want to "move on" in this way, as if it were some form of leaving him behind.  And the rational part of me immediately says no, that's foolishness.  Just like hesitating to...

...cross off days on the calendar.  I never did do that for July.  I just turned the page to the next month.  I told myself it was to represent the time that seemed to vanish.

...add tasks related to him to my lists.  But I admit, I did hesitate.  It was a form of acceptance I wasn't quite ready for.  But I got over that.

...remove the photo of him with Liberty and Dad from my Facebook profile picture.  I only recently realized that I would hesitate on that one.  And I guess I haven't felt like changing it enough yet to overcome that yet.

...leave his grave.  He's not there.  Not the part of him that matters most.  He's on to bigger and better things.  But I did hesitate there too.


Go on.  Live your life.  Live it with the end in mind.

Yes, I'm talking to myself. 


"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark... Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach.  Check your road and the nature of your battle.  The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours."  Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged.  (Clint quoted a longer version of this on his FB wall, March 16.  Ayn Rand was not a Christian but you can probably see how this can fit a Christian perspective easily, with perhaps a couple tweaks, such as the word "deserved."  A is A -- truth is truth.  Absolutely.).