All these words. These thoughts and feelings and emotions. Words I have written over the past few months. Words that cannot begin to describe the anguish, heartache, and despair from which I am suffering. Oh how I wish they were just words. I wish this was just a story I am telling. No one else’s story in particular because I would not wish this nightmare on anybody. But just a work of fiction.
Devastatingly this is no tale. This is real life. My life. My life that feels surreal now. This can’t be my life, can it? Parents don’t bury their children. Children don’t die. But they do. They are not supposed to, but the harsh reality is that children die every day and parents grieve the loss for a lifetime.
I feel like I am living in two separate realities. There is the one, the horrific life in which my daughter is dead and she is all I think about, day and night. I think about the memories we have made and the memories we never get to have. I think about her smile, her laugh, and her spirit and cry until there are no more tears left. And there is the other life, still horrific, and my daughter is still dead and she is still all I think about. But in this life I have to go on living. Against my will I have to live life. My heart continues to pump and my lungs continue to breathe. My body begs for food and water. The bills have to be paid. I must go to work. In a world where everything seems meaningless, where life seems to no longer have a purpose, I must “move on.”
It is next to impossible to reconcile these two worlds. How can I go anywhere, interact with anyone, converse, like everything is okay? It is not okay. None of this is okay. And yet I am forced to live like it is. No matter where I am, who I am with, what I am doing, this refrain is repeating over and over in my head. Ariella is dead. Ariella is dead. None of this matters because she is dead. People who don’t know me, who don’t know I once had a daughter and now I do not, cannot begin to guess the turmoil brewing in me. I live in two worlds. One an unspeakable nightmare and the other an unspeakable nightmare in which I pretend it isnt.
This life of mine feels like an illusion. Or an alternate reality. Going about normal business, making conversation, even getting dressed each day just feels wrong. How can I do normal things when life is anything but? How do I find it in me to care about anything anymore? On the outside I look like any person living life but on the inside the heartache and sadness and anger are bubbling inside me, threatening to boil over at any time, scalding me in the process.
I cannot begin to guess how my story will continue to unfold. I do know that sorrow, pain, and anguish will be a consistent theme. I viewed Ariella’s battle with cancer in chapters, because with cancer there is no end until you reach to reach the ultimate end. The first chapter was her first line of treatment. Second chapter was off treatment and third chapter began with her relapse and ended with her death. My story is broken up into two chapters. Before she died and after. This second chapter will cover the rest of my lifetime. When the world dropped out from under me, when everything changed, when life can no longer be carefree and just happy. No matter what happens in the future chapter 2 will be imbued with sadness and longing.
I love you so much!
We miss Ariella so much , it hurts.
Someone so special, so loved was taken from us.
You describe the two worlds perfectly – they are both nightmares. I miss Ariella more than I could ever describe. It’s unbelievable how much it hurts. I love you.