The Well, Part II

Last night I dreamed I was grieving over losing my mother, as her dementia takes her away from me.  At some point in the dream I remembered that I had also lost all of my sisters, and I just couldn’t take it.  It woke me up.  I guess in my dream state I don’t have enough defenses to protect me from what that really means to me—what they really mean to me.  In the dream I thought, No wonder I don’t go there.  The sadness is really too painful.  The system shuts down. 

But every time I feel it that fully, I also am glad to have touched into it.  I’m glad to know how I really feel.  I wish I could stay there longer and let myself remember my sisters more clearly, the way I do then.  In those moments I cherish them so much.  But that’s what’s so painful; then I know what I’m missing.  Maybe little by little as I survive these electric shocks of grief, I’ll be able to choose to touch that live wire, and hold on, and be with them. 

What’s it like to read this, I wonder?  I don’t write this heart-wrenching stuff to elicit sympathy.  I have enough inside myself and can always get more from my friends if I need it.  But something pulls at me to put words to it.  Grief tends to feel unique to each person, because of its intensity.  We feel alone, as if no one can know how we feel.  And that’s true.  But of course it is both unique and universal.  Should I just be writing this in a journal, or is it meaningful to anyone else?