“It means you did not love him if you don’t grieve, if you don’t suffer. It means you are heartless, devoid of feelings, unnatural”.
“This is a tragedy, you should be in pain.”
This is what my mind said to me. This and other things, equally atrocious. It said that to me and I could not believe it.
I hurt, yes, I did hurt. Simon was dead, killed a few hours earlier. Yes, he was just a fluffy little dog but he was a friend and a baby and a little creature full of love and we loved him and he was dead. Crashed in the jaws of a pit bull, at my feet.
“You should have known, you should have stopped it, you should have … you could have …”. My mind said that as well but I ignored it off hand, that was obviously ridiculous. The other stuff was as well, but still there was pain.
Why?
I could still feel him, he was not gone — he changed, he shifted. There was no tragedy, nothing terrible has happened. Simon have graduated from one way of being to another. He was okay, why wasn’t I?
Why? Why did I hurt?
It happened so fast. In an instant. He was there — and then he wasn’t, only a moment later. The world changed, life changed, so quickly … ah! There! I had it! Life changed, by I haven’t. It was a different life now, a life without Simon in my house, on the couch, in his bed, but my mind could not catch up. My slow, sluggish mind saw what it used to see, wanted what it used to have but it wasn’t there to be had anymore, and that hurt.
Not death. Not loosing him — that was not the source of pain. Death was not the source of pain, death was not the tragedy — it was my mind. It was my mind that hurt, my slow, sluggish mind that couldn’t keep up with life.
