Slipped through my Fingers

It is like trying to hold on to a gentle breeze or slowly drifting smoke from a burnt-out candle, unable to be grasped at it follows its own path or its own ability to fade away. I still feel my breath, catching deeper and tighter as I think of the loss I feel. My heart already has a hole in it where joy used to live. Tears can come so quickly, as if the loss has to escape before it takes over every cell in my body. The next moment, with the help of a clenched jaw, it settles back down menacingly waiting for the next trigger.

I’m still trying to catch that beautiful breeze. The one I knew for the last 20 years. The one I thought would always be part of my life. The easy smile and contagious laugh and the spontaneous hugs given freely are now all missing. We used to be each other’s worlds, and now we are not. This was to be expected, but not in this way, never in this way.

People say that this is just empty nesting, but it feels like more than that. We already had one fly the nest and we welcomed the excitement of watching his beautiful life unfold. There was four hours of silence in my soul after I left him across the water to start his new beginnings. There was pride, and our involvement had been welcomed. It was not easy to let him go three months after high school, but it was not this. It was what was expected.

He is the baby of what used to be our very close knit family. Thick as thieves, we all had fun together. A brothers duo with two parents doing our best to get them to stand on their own two feet when they were ready. Was it only on our terms that we would be happy? I like to think that that is not true. We really just wanted happiness and health for them. I suppose that that is where everything started to go wrong. Losing your health can change everything.

Parents of his friends ask me about him. I feel like I cannot speak. There are some things you just can’t talk about. The familiar all-encompassing nausea knows how to stop me. I cannot understand what happened and how things went so wrong for us. I don’t know how we don’t know him anymore. That person who I still love, who I loved from the first time I held him in my arms, has slipped out of my hands without the steps I expected. Nothing has been as was expected, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot that I can do about it. This feels like so much more than empty nesting.

I find myself spending hours looking at photographs that capture his eyes, his smile, his strength. I can feel the laughter and pride as I look at the times we had together before he was ill. Three years ago he was 17. A lot can happen in three years. These are now memories that act as a trigger that threaten my breath. I see his beautiful face and who he was and I dwell there, almost as if I can’t give it up and I wish it back with every ounce of my being. I want to live there. The pain makes every muscle tighten and the tears well up silently forming an involuntarily stream down my face. I miss him. I have to gasp a little and try to stop my heart from pounding. It is physical grief that has its own life force.

The sporadic photographs of late hold a face that I don’t recognize. Thin from chronic illness, the cheeky smile has disappeared and his face wears a sadness and a seriousness that can’t be punctured. Gone is my handsome young man, replaced with a disheveled looking imposter. I feel like shaking him awake, screaming “Where are you and are you ever coming back?” Gone into an isolated life where drugs are his new medication, I cannot reach him. Gone with his chosen family, he is not dead to me, but am I dead to him? Are we dead to him? He has orchestrated his own departure from all that he knew and held dear. He has chosen to fade away from here and exist somewhere else on his own path. I’ve calmed my breath but a slow creeping ache is developing up the side of my head. Tears are trying to flow again as I squeeze my eyes to send them back down below. I feel sick. The familiar tornado is spinning around and around in my head. A heavy feeling settles in my gut. I’m so tired. Closing the photo album, I wish I could feel that beautiful breeze in my life that meant all was whole. It is now beyond my grasp, having slipped through my fingers and faded away.