When the police officer asked “Are you alone?”
I knew for sure. Greg was dead.
I told the officer I needed to get in the car and drive to my brother and sister-in-law’s house. Thank God I live 5 minutes away.
I hung up the phone acutely aware of being the only one to know. Every other person in my family was going about their lives, as I had been doing moments before. The weight of this knowledge was suffocating.
I was taking HUGE breaths, like knee-jerk pranayama. I distinctly recall thinking in the car
“This is it. Life is never going to be the same.”
The most intense days of my life followed. Reality became hyper exposed; raw reality. The “real-ness” of everything was surreal.
Watching my parents suffer was the hardest to bear. It’s been over a year and things haven’t gotten easier.
It was during these days I developed a firm belief, that I still carry today.
It should have been me.
It should have been me.
It should have been me.
I will say it over and over and I ask others to be brave enough to not refute this truth.
It should have been me.
I recognize it sounds pathetic and pitiful, but it’s actually a sound, rational conclusion. God doesn’t even argue with me.
My brother had everything going for him, he was a father to a one-year old son. He had just completed graduate school and was working to develop his own business, everyone loved him. He was 38.
I, at 32, have nothing. No children, no love life, and barely any social life. I own nothing and my “career” is nonexistent.
If my parents were to lose one of their children, it should have been me. I’m easy clean-up.
Yes, it’s easy for my parents or my grandfather to say the same thing. But it’s different. Of course they feel like it should have been them. Losing a sibling is different.
I feel like a leach – a drain on my family.
I feel like a waste of space.
This feeling of “taking up too much space” is a large component of my eating disorder. I explored this in therapy and my therapist encouraged me to
Take Up More Space!
Today my therapist lies in a hospital bed, taking up space and not much else. She is brain dead. Just three weeks ago we were laughing together. Now she is waiting to laugh with the angels. Perhaps she already is and only her body is hanging on.
In her honor, I ‘m wondering what I need to do to take up more space? To color myself in so I am not a vacuous waste of space.
How can I become comfortable with my mass, the fact that I have matter, the fact that maybe
I MATTER?
I send these questions up to Heaven like the messages we tied to these balloons. Messages and questions for Greg.
**Update***
Three hours after writing this I got news that Marianne’s family had finally decided to take her home with Hospice and remove the ventilator.
Goodbye Marianne. You took up space in my heart and I will never forget you.
- Please refrain from leaving me comments I hear all the time “You shouldn’t feel that way….etc.” I’ll never relinquish my belief.
- Sorry to be Missy McSaddsterpants, but I had to get this out before I got distracted by something sparkly.
