The woman formally known as…

“She’s slipping away.”

I have repeated those words in my head and out of loud for the better part of the last 3 days.

To most people, these are just meaningless words. They don’t hold significance the way they do for me. Powerful. Loaded. Emotional daggers.

When I spoke them out loud, they always came with tears. When I repeated them in my head, they always came with tears. The tears seemed to have stopped now, but in hindsight I realize now that I haven’t had a substantial emotional reaction to all of this in a while, so I guess I should have seen this coming.

“She’s slipping away.” And then fade to darkness.

And man…when that train left the station..it went barreling off the tracks in spectacular fashion.

I think my face looked like a puffer fish for most of Saturday. I couldn’t sleep Saturday night and yet my eyes were practically swollen shut from all of my emotional madness. I called one of my closest friends who lives in South Africa since my 1:00AM is her 7:00AM and just asked that she stay on the phone with me as I tearfully tried to make sense out of my irrational and illogical wishes and feelings that one doesn’t typically say out loud.

“Please make it stop.” I said that a lot through lots of incoherent crying and mumblings about how she’s slipping away. The woman formally known as my mother will be ‘gone’ soon.

I am reminded that sometimes grief demands to be felt. You can’t always go over it, or under, or around it. Sometimes you just have to go through it. Feel it. Feel all of it. And sometimes that means you don’t get sleep, and you have ugly cry face, and you look like a puffer fish and you can’t get up and train in the morning, and you lean on your friends, and you debate whether to wake up your partner with another conversation about the same topic again, and you go through a few days in a depressed haze, where everything looks and feels blah, and you can’t quite snap out of it because you just have to feel it. All of it.

And then the train pulls back into the station. The tears stop. The swelling goes down on your face. You get in at least half the exercise you were supposed to do for the day. You smile and laugh with friends. Your partner sends you a supportive message. The issues that compounded the emotional reaction in the first place are still there but they seem somewhat more manageable. And it’s not that you’re any less overwhelmed. I’m still overwhelmed and in many ways still wondering how the ‘F’ am I going to deal with all of this. The haze hasn’t lifted completely, but enough where I can start to see what’s in front of me. There are things that need to get done. The rest of today. And tomorrow. And the next day after that. The fight rages on. There are things to do. Plans to make. Things to accomplish.

Tomorrow I will walk into work and cover for one boss and assistant the others. And smile. And make jokes. And train. And eat food at some point. And then I will put my arms around my special person at the end of the night. Reminding myself that despite this, I’m still trying to create a life. That despite this, I am still here. I have a good life. And not the kind that is just about persevering. The kind where you discover and rediscover joy everyday even in some small way. The kind of life she wants for me.

There’s a rumor going around that this is called resilience.

Not inherent. But built.

Onward.