4 years....
My chest tightens, and the tears are still at the edge of my eyes, ready to flow...
The time passes, and it's true that it eases the inner emotional struggle, but what it doesn't take away is the pain....The kind of pain that you can' explain or control, the kind of pain that is always nagging, always tugging, always reminding you of your immense loss...
As soon as my son't Birthday passes at the beginning of October, the memories overflow my mind and heart....That call I got right after the Birthday party week-end 4 years ago...I was still on celebratory high, still blissful and feeling happy and blessed to have a bright funny boy and a loving family who came to celebrate with us his 4th Birthday....still remember answering my phone while kicking up the balloons on the floor, looking cheerfully at all the decorations around.....and then "Bam!", the news hit...and my heart sank.
I will probably never forget this phone call, the one we all fear to get one day...The events rolled out so fast after that, and some details are fading, but I still remember slowly sitting down on a chair as I was listening to my sister on the phone and processing the news of my Dad being diagnosed with stage 5 cancer....I remember packing my suitcase to fly home...and how I packed black tops and black headbands, just as I was fearing I might need them....how I cried and prayed the whole flight over to Europe unable to sleep and rest and eat on the plane...how I arrived home and got weak in my knees seeing my Dad so frail, so skinny, and in so much pain....how I held his tiny big hand and prayed my simple prayer of salvation and how I so hoped he had heard me in his painful agony....how only an hour later I witnessed him take his last breath, and how everything after that became just a blur of a day with funeral arrangements, the afterglow with relatives, the first night without him and then weeks thereafter of my mom, my sister, and I together trying to figure out life without Dad....
In the 4 years that passed, I have realized that the pain though didn't fully disappear, it did subside.
It hurts, yet it doesn't sting.
It brings on tears, yet now they are more like a sad appreciation of days we had together.
It brings painful memories, yet it also brings healing...yes, pain does that. The more you acknowledge it, the more you explore it and address it, the healthier the relationship with your past is...You stop letting it define you, you stop living in it, stop regretting unfinished tasks, stop wishing for do-overs...you accept it as it happened, and you are able to move on.
I still experience pain....I always will. More losses will happen, and more tears will be cried. But my hope is that I will be able to rely on this experience to remind me that pain makes me real, pain helps me feel, pain brings on the healing.
You don't have to live in pain to heal.
You just need to have hope that one day it'll be OK.
One day, it'll be a different tomorrow.
One day, it'll be a new you.
I miss you, Papulya....I love you and I miss you....
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He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147:3)
