Tear Soup.

An entry from my journal yesterday:

2/5/10
Ah, nothing like the quiet walls of Goshen's public library to provide a nice little journaling haven. I'm visiting Goshen this week with Grandma and Grandpa. So far it's been good. Somewhat boring at times, but otherwise great to giggle with friends again and have an exciting social life surrounded by wonderful, caring people.

Yet college is still college. There's sill the absurd lifestyle of busy busy busy, go go go. There's still all homework and no sleep.

Somehow being here has secured my decision of staying home. Yes, Goshen is wonderful, but I'm at a place still where I need me-time. I want to live, now--not spend time studying how to live when I'm out of college. I need to feel in control of my life again; I need time to rediscover Becca to some extent; and I need to find hope within this first year that life is, and still can be, beautiful.

February has arrived. I feel like yelling at the months to slow down, to stop flying by me so fast that I can't even keep track of the day.
After February, March. And after March, April--
April, when the ground begins to thaw and buds start to show on bare trees and flowers peek out from muddy soil and the earth prepares for a fresh start; and Easter, where new life was welcomed and people gathered to meet the loved one they thought was gone...

Instead April holds that D word. Dying. Died. Death. A late night phone call that wakes me from my dreams and brings me into a reality I wish could only be a dream. Exhausting days spent in a hospital with disbelief and fleeting hope. Voices gathered around a bed with hands held, grasping for the words that will somehow say goodbye...how do you release someone into the hands of God when you never wanted them to leave in the first place?...
"Micah, you are known and loved by God..."

As I look ahead to April I wonder how I will greet the one year anniversary. There will be so much pain reliving those days--but there's also so much beauty in being able to celebrate Micah's life. There's also something significant about being able to say a year has passed; and to look back on the year and see the blessings and people that helped every day of that one year somehow survivable.
So maybe it will be a mixture of gratitude, relief, pain, sorrow? I'm both dreading/curious to see how it will balance out. This mixture of feelings seems to be quite a common occurrence in grieving...there never can just be one feeling, can there? That would be too easy.

I once heard grief described as a dance. I like the image of that. Lately I'd like to think I've been able to be more of a graceful ballerina, but of course there's still many moments of pure-chaotic-awkward-fumbling-angry-stomping dancing, like a giraffe on ice skates, or something.

Better get back to the college. I think these people are beginning to wonder who the crazy girl in the back of the library is, sitting at her journal laughing and crying at the same time...whoops.

On a final note, often I just think of Micah and smile. Oh, that boy. Lately I could so go for a good Micah-Becca-uncontrollable-laughter moment, one where we would both be frozen with laughter together, and he'd slump over me because his body would practically go limp from all the laughing, then our eyes would tear up and our bellies ache and the cycle would just repeat again. Happiness.