Walking with Tears…

The recent tragedy last weekend that took the lives of Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gianna…as well as the lives of the Altobelli and Chester families and pilot, Ara Zobayan, just took my breath away. It was a gut punch that stopped my world for a minute.

I guess all I could think about was Mrs. Kobe Bryant. Like many of us seeing our family members leave home for work, school, or various errands, appointments, etc., saying our goodbyes in the morning is typical and routine. We know we will see them when they return home. The return is imminent, and it is always taken for granted there WILL be a return. My heart aches for these families today. I think of them and my heart swells with tears. We all feel it, I guess. How could we not? The numbing reality that your loved one will not be walking through that door anymore, though you look at the door with the anticipation that they will be there. This must be a dream or horrible nightmare that doesn’t seem to end. It is a tragedy that takes one breath away, and sometimes it is hard to ever catch that breath again.

Since my first and last blog entry in April of 2019, one that I never really published, my world came tumbling down when my mother passed away. My mom. A woman who had suffered a stroke in 2007, and our world changed forever. I became her sole caregiver for 12 years, and it changed our lives. While I knew in theory that my mother wouldn’t live forever, I was not ready for her sudden departure in the summer of 2019. My soul sensed that I should not travel this past summer, but stay close to home to be near my mom, and my soul was right. My mother suffered another stroke after a fall in July, and by the end of August, she was receiving palliative care in the nursing home. I was by her side every day that summer. Even with the inevitable, I was terrified and traumatized by her passing. When she breathed her last breath, I lost my breath at that moment…and it hasn’t returned since.

And so I walk with tears…every day. I have accepted that this is my life for now. To walk with tears. I’ve accepted that this is how I grieve. Going to work, carrying on my daily life, walking with tears. Isolating…insulating….holding memories of my mother in my heart. Perhaps this is how everyone grieves…I don’t know. But my heart is on my sleeve for the most part. It can only take one engagement, one particular moment driving past the nursing home (which I do every day, as I must pass it every day on the way to and from work), a glimpse of something familiar, that can trigger me into a deluge of tears.

So when I heard about the helicopter crash that took the lives of celebrity and non-celebrity, I was shaken back into the devastation and trauma of loss. (It’s only been 6 months for me.) And my soul took on the pain of Vanessa Bryant…still takes it on…and I stand in her place, praying. I stand in the place of the Chester, Altobelli and Zobayan families, praying. When the memorials and well-wishers have moved on, they will have to walk out their new normal without their loved ones. Trying to make sense of this marriage of trauma and new reality. Fighting depression and hopelessness while trying to breathe and carry on. As they are trying to catch their breath, I am breathing prayer for them. I know someone, somewhere, breathed a word of prayer for me, when I couldn’t catch my own. And as I pray and look up into the sky where eternity lies and our loved ones watch us, I continue to walk …with tears.