The difference between men and women

The other day I was telling Matt how guilty I still felt, that I had the opportunity to go to the hospital while she was still alive but didn't take it, how her death could have been prevented.  How that guilt eats at me, though I can ignore it most times.  Truth is, her death could have been prevented and I was too ignorant at the time to do what I needed to.

His response was "I don't think about it all that often.  What good would it do, we can't change it."

Sometimes I wish I could think like a man.  I wish I had that ability to "turn off" what I can't fix.  I know he was devastated too.  I know that he loves her and misses her.  He can just turn it off.

For me it's like white noise in the background, this grief.  Most of the time it only catches my attention when the rest of the world quiets down enough.  Sometimes my ear catches it and I can't stop listening to it.  It's always there though.  I can close my eyes and see her here, with her siblings, playing and laughing.  Bossing them around.  Bringing me a comb to do up her beautiful red curls.  These images skirt my peripheral vision, and I can't ever catch them in focus.  Sometimes my mind catches a window into that alternate reality though.  What life should have been.  And I have to hold in the grief, the anger, the self-loathing, until I'm alone and let it spill out in my tears.



"First, please know that grief is the natural by-product of love. One cannot selflessly love another person and not grieve at his suffering or eventual death. The only way to avoid the grief would be to not experience the love; and it is love that gives life its richness and meaning. Hence, what a grieving parent can expect to receive from the Lord in response to earnest supplication may not necessarily be an elimination of grief so much as a sweet reassurance that, whatever his or her circumstances, one’s child is in the tender care of a loving Heavenly Father."
~Lance B. Wickman