When I was a child I use to have this reoccurring dream of being in a void. A darkness with just myself a small thin q-tip like figure and a giant cotton ball. The cotton ball was rolling towards me and with each roll it would get bigger and I would get smaller. The large cotton ball would eventually fill the void in the room with itself and just as it was to completely encompass the void which would include me I would wake up.

Walking through the aftermath of death feels like that dream only without the ability to wake up and realize it was a dream. The loneliness you feel is unbelievable. No one knows how to be there for you so instead you will find they aren’t. Your heart has been removed thrown, beaten, bruised ,torn and trampled and you are left to pick up the pieces alone. Death is unfair and unkind. It will bring you to your knees and leave you gasping for air.

I didn’t know it was possible to bear so many emotions at one time. I didn’t know that with great love ultimately would mean great loss. There are many things in life you are unprepared for marriage, babies, raising children. People can share their experiences but until you’ve experienced it first hand you can’t really understand. But I think that although many people have experienced and lived through it death is wholly and completely intimate and unique. There are just so many factors. I don’t know if I will ever have the ability to live and love again. I don’t know if I will be able to mend my heart enough to trust putting it into another person’s hands to care for. What I do know is that death has no respect or concern for anyone or anything. It does not care about those it takes from. It sweeps in like a thief in the night and takes everything that is precious to you. And in its wake you are left to pick up the pieces of your life and attempt to mend them. Like shattered China.