I want to grab ahold of the World, turn it upside down and shake everything loose.  I want the sad, depressing, difficult parts to fall away, to vanish into the ether, so that when I turn it all right side up again, all we’ve got left are the good pieces.  The thing is, I’m not even sure if I could figure out which was which.

I can’t get my arms around the World, either, and I’m not strong enough to lift it.  Besides, the vigorous shake I would give it would do nothing more than rattle everything around.  Probably break a few things in the process.  Nice things like summer days would end up cloudy and muddied.  And I’ve had enough of the rain to last for a good long while.  Best for me to just sit here, nearly motionless, my only action the turn of the page of the newspaper I hide behind like a shield.

Ensconed by the fences of our yard I choose to enjoy the warm air and sunlight.  With an almost-imperceptible effort that is oh-so-familiar to me now, I decide that today’s beauty will not cut me to pieces.  It is a choice, though.  It is all too easy to let the grief and despair dominate.

This doesn’t get easier.  It’s not better today than it was any yesterday.  In some ways it is even worse, because now there’s been all this time to think about what happened, and to more fully realize how deep losing him goes.

He is gone but we are still here waiting for him.  And everyone we know is looking back at us from their bright and lively futures.  I don’t feel that sense of future.  It is all just one long, brutal Now that started the moment we lost him.  Because that cannot and will not ever change it is difficult to feel that anything has changed at all.

Now I am exactly montionless, because even reading has stopped.  Only my thoughts remain moving as I twist around and around how today the World is the same because Silas is not here.  Tears flow down my cheeks but I don’t wipe them away.  There are still so many more to come and I have no where to go.