Beginnings and Endings

Until recently, my perception of the world has been very similar to that of a book. Each stage of my life could be divided up neatly into chapters, each with a beginning, middle and even an end of sorts. Although unique in their own way, these periods of my life still held some small grain of predictability and with it the comforting perception of normal. Although occasionally riddled with aspects of the unknown, for the most part they still fell within our picture of expectation and didn’t truly upset our day to day lives. For 47 years I was blessed to live in this bubble.

So when tragedy of a major magnitude hits, when reality strikes in such a way that shakes the very foundation of your being, everything changes on a cataclysmic level. And as the weeks and months wane on, when the crowds start to thin out, you suddenly wake up to find you’ve been thrown onto an island of sorts. One with a very long bridge separating you from the comfortable world of normal you once knew. This bridge becomes an unspoken barrier that many may find hard to cross.

So it’s not surprising when relationships, even those once considered indestructible, start to show cracks. We no longer fit into the normal narrative that once defined us, and for some, this divide between worlds can be seen as insurmountable. It is human nature to find comfort in a world of controllable events, each with a clear beginning and ending. When grief is thrown into the mix it can be a very inconvenient disrupter. By its very nature it is ongoing and unpredictable. Left with no page to turn, nothing concrete to point to and say “I’m glad we made it through that”, this new reality can be jarring and will leave some choosing to slowly pull away. We are left to grieve not only the huge loss that rocked our lives, but also the loss of our world as we knew it.

Despite these changes I believe there are still many wonderful days ahead. The friends that we are blessed to keep and the new ones we have yet to meet will, in time, help calm the winds of this hurricane we find ourselves in. And when the skies have cleared we might even find our island no longer feels quite so isolated or the bridge quite so long. Although this particular chapter will stay forever ear marked with no resolution, our daughter forever 20 years old, for her sake we will continue on making new memories and living life as fully as possible. There are stories waiting to be written and I truly believe hope can be found in the new beginnings that await us.