Sometimes you’re watching…

…a movie and, for just an instant, you think of calling your Mom.

Sometimes you hear a song that you know you sent the video version to your Dad, but you don't know if he ever watched, and listened, and heard, what you wanted him to hear.

Sometimes you can recall their faces from the last memories you have of being with them, but you want to find a certain photograph to remember…instead.

Because this is what happens when they die.  You remember even when you don't want to.  The good and the bad and all the inbetweens.

The inbetweens may be be the last time you saw them.  Not a special time at all.

How could that inbetween even count?

And you wonder if that inbetween will be enough to hold you.  Or was it even enough to hold them?

And you have no idea of what they remembered.

They are just gone.

And there is nothing, not a hole, not a void, no empty space.

Just nothing.

People die and they're gone.

They may remain in one's memories, but do we remain in theirs?

If their memories even… remain.

I knew I was going to lose my mother that last time she went to the hospital.  I knew she wasn't coming home.  And because she was hooked up to so many machines we couldn't even talk to each other.  Not on the phone.  Not in a hospital room.  Not at all.

I had time.  I was prepared.

It's not that I didn't hurt any less.  It's just that I had been mourning my the loss of my mother before she was even gone.

My father's death came out of nowhere.  Oh, I knew he would die, too.  I just thought, at least, he'd be here another five years.  Minimum.

And now I feel as though I am mourning them both.  It's almost as if my mother's death was easier, because I still had my Dad.

Now that they're both gone I grieve so deeply.

My parents are dead.

I'm 51 years old and somehow I feel orphaned.

Why is it when I'm alone with the grief it becomes unbearable?

That I can only wonder where they are.

Or that I am obsessed with wanting to know if they are anywhere at all.

Because I know that a body didn't make my parents here.  It was their consciousness that made them here.  All those connections in their brains that their bodies interpreted and presented to me.

If all that electricity is no longer there, that should mean that my parents are gone, too.

And that just doesn't seem enough.

That we live and then just die.

So I ache to know if there is still something of them having gone somewhere once their physical body stopped working.

Why do we have to die to find out if there is anything more?

Those pholks that die and are then revived have vivid tales for us, but I don't think they were ever really dead because here they are.  Still.

If one is truly dead there can be no revival.

Where are my parents?  My grandparents?  My Uncles?  My pets?

Are they anywhere?

Will I go anywhere?

Will anyone ache to know if I went anywhere like I ache for that knowledge?

Is my grief intensified because I ache to know what comes after?

Is this ache to know even grief?

Is all of this just another one of those things I think everyone experiences, but really, it's not so many at all, and no, it's not normal. 

Here.  We have a pill for that, too.