When worlds collide

I often imagine this parallel world, one where the dead exist.
See, I have this theory. I think that we are all composed of the universe, of the trees and the stars and the ocean, and inside everyone there is this one thing, one piece of their soul, that makes them different from every other person on earth. The essence of your being, so to speak. The you inside of the universe.
So in this other world, I imagine the dead, this essence of their souls, living. They exist in a world very similar to ours, where we meet in passing, but we can never see them.
Maybe I imagine this because it brings me comfort. Maybe it's a fairytale I want to believe in because it gives me some semblance of peace.
I believe that in this other world, my loved ones exist. Not always, but sometimes.
Sometimes we happen to cross paths. When I'm riding in the car on the way home, when I'm rushing to get to work on time, when I'm in the kitchen making scrambled eggs. I can feel it, a sudden rush of energy. I whisper their names, Cam, Mia, and I wonder if perhaps, in their world, they are whispering mine as well.
It only happens for an instant. For one brief second my world catches up with theirs and there is this rush of air and all the remembering in the world is mine. It doesn't hurt, not like you might think. It's kind of peaceful.

Christmas 2013

I've never been much of a Christmas person.
Correction, I've never been much of a people person. After a few hours with family I'm burnt out and in desperate need of a closet in which to hide.
I also get a little nostalgic at Christmas. A little sad reflecting over this past year, and all that happened. It's usually a bitter sweet kind of sad, though. This year was no exception.
It was my second Christmas without Mia.
Last Christmas was a blur, only a few months out after losing Mia. I was a mess, and barely had time to get ready for the holidays.
This year they seemed to sneak up on me as well. I was the frazzled woman standing in line on Christmas Eve with an armful of presents and a fierce look of determination.
The Christmas Eve service I attended last night was around the theme "Fear Not."
I thought back on this year, in the 15 months that have passed since I lost Mia. There are a million things I could fear. And yet there was a strange peace over my heart.
This morning I awoke and opened presents with my family. We ate a big turkey and the extended family came over and it was jolly and merry and everything Christmas is supposed to be.
It was bitter sweet for me. It came with a pang of nostalgia and a wave of grief.
I barely remember last Christmas, to be honest. I couldn't tell you now what I got, what I gave or who's house I went to. It was a blur. I was numb.
This Christmas felt heavier.
This Christmas I felt pain deep in my body, and felt Mia's little body so close I could close my eyes and remember so distinctly what it was like in that moment when she was born.
While I've been working hard to let go of all I can't control, to accept what was, there are moments when I feel her close and I just accept it.
"Hi darling girl. Mama misses you."
I know, mama, I'm here.
This Christmas I listened to Kate Rusby and looked at the stars as I drove home, thinking about grief and love and how funerals and memorials are more for the living than the dead.
This Christmas I felt her, in a way I rarely do anymore, and smiled.

Parallel Universe

I watched the snow fall from the hospital window. I sat in a chair overlooking the city beside my mother, who had come in to get some tests done.
She was being tested for cancer. It runs in the family. My grandmother died from cancer, my aunt died from cancer, my cousin died from cancer.
It seems death runs in our family, like a winding ribbon or a vein, tying it all together.
My heart felt heavy as I thought of how things should be.
Sometimes, in my head, I live in this parallel universe. One where my baby didn't die and my love didn't die and my mother isn't being scanned for cancer and where I'm not sitting in a hospital in December, days before Christmas, thinking the one thing that links our family is death.
I drink my tea and watch the thick snowflakes and the dim glow coming from the bright lights and I hear her voice.
"Hi Mama."
I look around. She's not here. I know she's not here. She's dead.
"Everything will be ok, mama."
They are the only words I hear from her, sweet daughter of mine.
Sometimes, in the midst of a snowstorm or late at night, she whispers to me. I can feel her hands on my face, her breath on my neck.
It's only for a moment, only a brief second in this parallel universe where my daughter still exists, where she is learning to whisper my name, when her father is just in the other room instead of buried under the frosty ground.
But a minute is enough, enough to keep me pushing forward.
"I hear you baby," I whisper into my tea, "I love you."

bad

I'm bad at writing.
I'm bad at keeping up my blog in this little neck of the woods. So often it gets pushed to the side, and I forget to write. I apologize.
I'm bad at managing this grief. more often than not I simply drag it behind me, like a ball and chain. Sometimes I think I'm doing alright. Other times I just want to crawl in bed and ignore the world.
Like today. Today I want to crawl in bed and pretend the world outside doesn't exist.
I'm bad at being nice to people. I snapped at the lady in the grocery store. I ignored my co-worker until she thought of me as arrogant and bitchy and decided never to speak to me again.
I'm bad at displacing my grief into constructive, creative outlets. On my birthday, when I couldn't stand being without them, I got my nose pierced. Because I wanted it to hurt, like that last morning I had with them.
I'm a bad mother. If I was a good mother, my baby wouldn't have died.
I'm a bad lover. If I had been a good lover, a good girlfriend, my partner wouldn't have died.
I'm a bad baby loss mama, a bad widow. I feel like I should smile more. I should probably smile more, right? And getting out of this room would help. Showering, maybe, changing clothes, washing my hair and brushing my teeth. Maybe it would help if I wasn't so angry, so isolated in my grief.
Maybe it would help if I didn't wear red lipstick and hadn't gotten a hole in my nose. I mean, what kind of person does that?
Sometimes I feel like a bad person. I know I'm not. I know I'm a normal person dealing with life and that never before has this happened and that this experience is all my own and I know all of this. My therapist, Violet, she tells me these things. She listens to me. Sometimes I get mad at her, but she never yells back, or ignores me. She just tells me it was a good session, that I displayed emotion.
She told me not to filter, to just say what I feel. Sometimes that gets me into trouble. I'm still learning how to do that.
The last few months, while I haven't been writing here, I have been writing, a lot. I've been playing guitar again (badly. I only know a few chords). I've been taking long walks and working and sometimes staying in bed and sometimes crying and sometimes ignoring certain people.
I want to write here again. I want to be my old self again but I'm still trying to find it.
I hope to start blogging here more regularly, even if its only once every couple of weeks. I think maybe its good for me, therapeutic.
But I'm not making any promises.
We both know I'm bad at blogging.