I Know the Trauma of Death; by Teri Kellogg
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! The primal scream of grief! No one could have prepared me for this life-changing moment. The shock to my body when I heard those unimaginable words. As if screaming could magically somehow stop the highway patrol officer from telling me my husband had just been killed in a car accident.
In this un-namable emptiness, a veil now slipped between me and the world, and nothing seemed real. I knew it wasn’t real. My mind kept telling me…. this is not real but my fear knows it is. My swirling mind struggles to maintain this interminable balancing act. Looking around, I tried to reach out for something, anything, holding on, as if I could steady myself from my world collaspsing in all around me. I hear someone speaking faintly from the distance and I have to strain to hear him. He wants me to sit down, trying to explain that I need to. No, I feel so angry and belligerant. I can’t. I have to stand up to it, to the horror of this moment. Nothing makes sense. In these few horrible moments, the world became somehow one dimensional and I tried to come to, opening my eyes wide enough to come to the realization that this is not a dream, and now time stands still. I am numb. Now all I know are feelings…..despair, blackness, hollow, lifeless, alone….so alone. I feel everything and nothing all at once. I am so lost, helpless, and shattered. In one misbegotten instant I now am realizing that my life is changed forever. And only a minute has passed since I knew.What do I do now, I’m so disoriented. I think, is this really is a dream? I am filled with immobilizing fear. Is this really my life? Minutes, even hours pass and slowly through the haze it begins to sink in that no one, absolutely no one can change this fact, or even make it slightly better for me. There is no changing it. It is real. It is true. He is gone and will never be coming back. I keep repeating this fact to myself over and over like a mantra. This is true. This is true? Can this be true? No, it can’t be true. It’s not true. It’s true. It is true. Truth never hurt me so much and it keeps hitting me in the face, over and over. Just walking is hard. I am dragging myself from one room to another, looking around at everything like I had never seen it before. It’s so quiet….deadiningly still. I feel dead, too!
My friends surrounded me with words and looks of empathy, but nothing and no one could change what I felt. People never looked at me like this before. Somewhere inside of me it felt healing, but once alone, the darkness enveloped me again.There was no sense of time passing, and when it did, painfully slow. Crying now became my daily companion, morning, noon and night. It physically hurt to cry such incredibly painful tears that were now coming from the darkest depths of me. A reservoir so deep that had never existed before. Surely it had to dry up and end soon, but it was not to come for many years. Even now, I find this all too familiar sadness leaking out at very unexpected times. A song, a smell, a distant memory will bring it back to the surface. Time helped, but slowly. And I could not speed it up even if I had wanted to. This is an agonizing process that one must endure. The reality was that real angels, friends, family and others, total strangers, came into my life healing my soul, caring for me, loving me back to life!
It has been important for me to learn that this is a real TRAUMA. It is very real. I have felt it as you have. You are most definately,
not alone……that is why we write these stories. To let you know, we have known your sadness and despair, we do feel your pain, and we are here, healing with you…….we are your community. We are your foundation. The Foundation for GRACE.
