What had I done?
I betrayed Grady.I betrayed him.
I sucked in a gasping breath and whatever barrier had been left completely dissolved. My cries were loud now, ugly and desperate. I held my hands over my face and wept while my soul shattered apart.
Emma came running into the room completely frightened by my breakdown. “Oh, Liz,” she gasped when she found me on the floor.
I felt her arms wrap around me so tightly it hurt as she slid down next to me. She held me against her chest like a small child, rocking me back and forth. Her tears mingled with mine and she mourned with me even though she couldn’t begin to know what a horrible person I was.
When I had finally settled down some, she asked, “Was it horrible?”
I shook my head as more tears started to fall. “It was wonderful,” I confessed.
“Then why are you crying?”
“Because it was wonderful.And because he kissed me!”
“You didn’t want him to?”
“No,” I shook my head and my face scrunched as hot tears poured from my eyes. “I didn’t want him to stop.”
She finally understood my inner conflict. She pulled me into her arms and I stayed there as both of us cried for the husband I’d love and the husband I’d buried.
Emma couldn’t possibly understand all of the emotional turmoil that beat on me, that stirred up my insides and ravaged my heart. But she knew that this hurt me. That it both killed me and somehow sewed me back together.
I didn’t know what to do about Ben or if there was even anything to do. The only thing I knew that night was that it had been one of the best of my life.
And one of the worst.
Stage Four: Depression
There has been this faint hope inside of me that while I work through these stages of grief, they would become easier along the way.
I pictured myself healing as I waged war with each stage, gradually building armor that would protect me from the hurt, heartache and despair.
That hope is a lie.
Grief doesn’t get easier with each stage. Grief becomes harder, more difficult to face, more consuming with each breath that I take.
I am adrift in a sea of confusion. I am lost in a desert of heartache.
I am broken.
And now I must face depression.
This is the last of the great miseries. I am supposed to find acceptance after this stage, but I don’t think it will happen.
I can’t help but believe I will be lost in depression for the rest of my life.
The only light I can find, beyond my children, is in Ben and he brings his own private agony that rips at my chest with claws as sharp as knives.
He is both comfort and pain.Both freedom and shame.
The relief I feel when I am with him is at odds with my private guilt.Guilt that I try to ignore.
Grady has been the only life I know.
But can there still be life in death?
