Pause

"How are you?"

"Fine."
"OK"
"Alive."
"Getting by."
Silence.
"Barely able to function."
"Terrible."

It hasn't really gotten easier answering niceties.  Sometimes we want to talk, sometimes we don't.  Sometimes we only want to talk to each other, sometimes we want to talk to other people.  It's always awful.

We are alive.  We are functioning for the most part.  Going to work most days, eating most meals, and sleeping most nights.  Time is going by at a slow crawl.  It doesn't feel right to commit ourselves to new endeavors to fill up the time, so we try to pile up take-it-or-leave-it activities.  Watching T.V.  Working out.  Crocheting for Elizabeth.  Cooking for Chris.  Sometimes it feels good to make something, sometimes we can't do anything but sit.

Most people have dreams for the future.  We have dreams, but there's not a thing we can do right now to try to make them a reality.  We just have to wait.  For time to go by, for things to happen, for grief to change.

We're on pause.  We can't wait to get off pause, but there's nothing we can actively do to move things along.  People like to say when things are bad to move on or move forward, but we can't move towards anything yet.  This horrible pause brings more frustration, impatience, and sadness.  Sadness for losing Obie (always), sadness for ourselves, sadness that we aren't really living right now.  "Life is short."  No kidding.

 Hiking in Muir Woods, 2/28/2015

Motivational speeches and tropes just don't apply to us right now.  Elizabeth went to a conference recently, and most of the fluff was even more irritating than usual.  Being told to drop her perspective at the door was laughable, being told that fear was courage trying to get in was inane.  Making nice with pregnant strangers was next to impossible, and crying in the exhibitor's hall probably happened.  In general, people are nice and very worried when you shockingly start crying during small talk.  She's done it enough times now that it's not even embarrassing.

Someday, hopefully, this time will be a painful memory that we never revisit.  We love thinking of our Obie and will cherish those memories forever.  But now?  This empty time of acute grief, deafening silence, and aching hearts?  There's nothing we can do but try to get through it, and hope the pause is almost over.

Hiking in Castle Rock State Park, 2/22/2015