My mother passed away on February 1st. Our relationship was not an easy one. I made peace with that before her passing, yet the feelings still can knock me off center.

Grief is a twisted, turning path that dips and turns on a dime when you least expect it. You can go from laughter to tears in the blink of an eye. Anger can swell like tsunami, uncertainty slides in, and you find yourself staring off into the distance. Memories swirl around you like gale force winds that no one else around you feels. Fear hits like a fist when you realize you can’t remember the sound of their voice, or the feel of their touch, and the loss rolls over you again, raw and jagged.

The cycle continues at random, in strange intervals, enough to keep you on edge. You feel like you are held together with barbed wire and grit, with nothing but your sheer will to make it through another day without them.

You long for someone to truly understand what you feel, to give you a soft place to land. Having a safe place to fall apart seems like a luxury you will never know. No one stands ready to help put you back together again. The person who was supposed to do that, be that for you, is the one who is gone.

It is not a job for the faint of heart. No one steps forward for the job.

I came home to a house alone. No one there to hold my cares, a painful heart torn apart. One more grief stain in a world of too much pain. It seems I’ve hit a wall, and I have no safe place for my tears to fall.