Two months

My god, has it already (only?) been two months since that horrible day? Some days it feels like it was just moments ago and others it seems like a whole different lifetime. I continue to try to make sense of what happened but am left with only more questions. Recently I have begun to experience sudden, unprovoked, and very disquietingly vibrant memories of that day.

At first I had wanted to try and remember all I could in an effort to recall each and every sensation of our last moments together. I tried to remember our exact words, precise actions, and every other specific instances of our final 24 hours together. I recalled my birthday the day before and all we did. How we went to bed, as we always did, in each other's arms after another amazing day spent together. I've often thought of the lazy morning we spent, having coffee, watching some TV, and lounging on the sofa before heading to my mom's for brunch. I've concentrated on the rest of the day, until the moment in the restaurant, to remember as many of the details as possible. In doing so, more details have come to me and each one is a treasure unto itself.

But the new memories, the ones about which I haven't consciously sought to think, deal with the moment in the restaurant and the agonizing hours that followed. I can see the light and life in Karen's eyes, which still brings a smile to my face, but then struggle to reconcile that with how it instantaneously went away. My mind lets loose a torrent of images, it floods me with the sights and sounds of my life crashing to pieces around. They do not come about from any discernible trigger, but rather out of nowhere and caused by nothing. (An experience I've heard described as "ambush grief," as if I needed any more.)

While the end of that day is blur to my thinking mind, my subconscious revives devastating facets of it. The loneliness of the waiting room at the hospital, despite having my entire family with me. The helplessness of not knowing what was happening, only to be replaced by the devastation of finding out. The unimaginable anguish of being brought to see Karen's body for the final time, followed later by unthinkable misery of holding James for the first and only time. The visions are disturbing in their clarity. Disturbing not because I want not to remember, but because when I see and recall them it brings me back to the utter incomprehensibility of what happened. In turn my emotions range from dispar, to anger, to numbness.

At some point during the week of the funeral I spoke with Rabbi Bachman, telling him that dispite my despondenence I sensed I had not yet reached my emotioal nadir. I was petrified at the contemplation of the days, months, and years to come. The resurgence of these memories and the emotions they produce confirm the fear I had, and yet I still feel I have not yet reached the bottom.

As I've said to so many in person and online, I continue to put one foot in front of the other and take it one day at a time...what other choice do I have? But I can not conceive of how to even do this without the continued love and support of my family and friends.