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Riptide

Yesterday, all I could feel was how weak and vulnerable I am, unable to control anything.  I could feel the riptide of sorrow trying to pull me in, take me in the undertow.  "Don't fight it if you get pulled in," I can hear my mother saying, I've heard those words a million times in my life.  Let it take you until it spits you out, but don't fight it, you can't beat it.  I liken this grieving to the world's largest undertow.  My gut reaction is to fight, to swim against it as hard and fast as I can, I don't want it to take me under, I don't want to, I want to swim away.  I want to be anywhere but here, and I certainly don't want to freely enter the fury.  But, I've no choice,  I'm in the undertow of grief, it has pulled me in, I had no choice in entering this dark and dangerous place.

Today, there is peace.  I can't explain it, there was just peace.  I thanked my God today for my son.  I realized today that as hard as this is, as painful as this is, I would do it a again and again if it meant that it gave me each and every moment that I shared with my son. Poets and philosophers have spoken of how you can not know pain without first knowing love, it is true. I know the love of a child, my child.  I know the pain of death, my child's death.  In my world, there is no greater human love in this Earth than that between a parent and a child and I believe there is no greater human pain in this Earth than that of a parent whose child precedes them in death. Disagree if you wish, I do believe we all grieve differently, but I've lost many people in my life, and nothing, absolutely nothing, is like this.  This death destroys who you were and deletes your identity, all while it takes your future, steals your dreams and crushes your soul.

A riptide is a stretch of turbulent water in the ocean or sea where the currents meet or there is an abrupt change in depth.  This journey with grief is very much like the riptide, it is unpredictable, volatile, strong, aggressive and insidious.  For those of us who have entered this place,  I hope that soon it will spit us out a little further along the shore.
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