I’m crying and I don’t know why. I can’t stop and I don’t know why. It’s those ugly sobs. The kind you lie on the floor and curl into a ball for because it’s the only comfortable place to be.
I dreaded coming home tonight. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I know how quite and still it will be when I unlock the door and turn on the light. I do though, I have to. I open the door, see the train track my three bubbling babies and I put together on the living room floor at 6 AM this morning, and I’m reminded.
Moments like these feel so solitary.
So uniquely solitary.
I fold to my knees begin picking up the wooden track, the little cars, the tiny engines, tears forming, sobs unstoppable.
One year ago tomorrow I lost a girlfriend to cancer. I broke down at my desk hearing the news. She was younger than me, with two small children. It was shocking and heart wrenching. A year ago I sat in the church at her wake sobbing, wondering if that was me where would my children go? Who would give them the life I promised them? I was awaiting biopsy results on thyroid cancer myself, results that still need to be redone quarterly and I was heartbroken and afraid.
I sit here in a pile of train tracks missing a life. A life of a girlfriend and all the potential possibilities she had. But missing my own life as well. In the midst of my tears I noticed her husband’s loving post on Facebook:
“One year ago tomorrow morning at 3:05 AM…we sat alone….I held your hand while you took your last breath. The kids and I will love you forever….we miss you….and your spirit will NEVER leave us.”
It breaks my heart to read, yet makes me feel silly for feeling alone in this moment. At least my aloneness is not his. But then I think, he can always love her, he can miss her, he can mourn her. I can do none of this in my situation. The one I shared 16 years of my life with is essentially worse than dead to me, because I was never given the chance, to grieve, or to miss or to mourn the end of a life shared together. It was just over in an instant, in wicked betrayal and deceit.
It’s times like these when I feel the most alone. When the comfort of a companion is hard to go without. When knowing someone knows you and still endures, even loves you, is priceless.
Written by Sarah Centrella
Author | Life Coach | Motivational Speaker and single mama. I'm a chick on a mission to prove anything is possible for ANYONE. My story featured in the New York Times, Steve Harvey Show and NBC.
Sarah, that was very well written. I could feel your pain, passion and yearning for something or someone to hold on to. Keep your head to the sky and continue to struggle through your darkest of times and you will not only find what you desire, you will find that you are stronger everyday. I hope this very short note will find you in great health and the best of spirits.
Through it all, be your best you.
~Trouble