Love and melancholia

This is my first post in two months; my first of 2017.  I feel as though I’ve been to another indescribable hell and back; I know it now as the holiday season.  It’s been two and a half years… In that time, I’ve grieved the loss of my oldest son, Sam; his forlorn physical absence and my own soul searching for life’s now meaning.  I’ve mourned him with personal challenges to survive his death and move him forward with me as well as perceiving failings to be a good-enough mother to his brother Nick who is now in his Senior high school year.  So too, another loss-season now… melancholia.  Here, I am totally submerged in “my work” at surviving loss.  I don’t even know what “work” I am actually doing though.  I do know it consumes so much of my time and energy so my blank stare, buried face, off-beat chuckle, lost words or too much expression of care, likely gives away that I am not really present where I am.  I also know when it isn't hidden by illogical distraction, loss reveals its never-ending pain; loss hurts so physically, painfully, pit-in-your-stomach, head spinning, acid-in-your-throat, endless tearing, dripping nose, piercing stab-in-your-chest, bad.  In the simplest of thoughts, while the closest to Sam can think or talk of him in the past tense as the smiling, self-knowing teen of 16, to me, Sam is aging and he is now 19.  You see, he’s my first born, the oldest brother and Nick, his younger brother, is now 18.  That’s where my life finds me… still unimaginable.  #muchlovetosam