The Void

Have you ever felt like you were being chased by silence? Or felt the weight of nothing?

The sudden loss of someone you love does that. There’s this constant sensation that something is missing, this echoing emptiness enveloping you. In quiet moments, the sadness creeps in, sneaks up behind you and surprises you with its tenacity. It’s still here…

My mind searches and searches for answers, attempting to fill this void, but the result is always the same. She is gone and it’s incomprehensible. She was so vibrant and full of life one minute (actually for 71 years of minutes!), and then she was gone. Who knew that the absence of someone could take up so much space in a room? Who knew that silence could be so loud? That emptiness could be so heavy?

Everywhere I look I see the negative space in the composition of my life with Nancy. Where once the space around her defined her physical presence, now the space where she isn’t defines her absence. I first learned the concept of negative space in 11th grade art class. I am not 100% sure I am interpreting it accurately, but this abstract way of thinking resonates with where my grieving mind keeps landing.

We went skiing last weekend, one of Nancy’s favorite activities. When I opened the door to the condo, I expected her to be there, as if maybe our paths just haven’t crossed this past month. Her smile and her voice are so vivid, my mind insists that she’s here somewhere. Out at dinner, the lack of a chair reserved for her made my chest ache. Her absence weighs on us and fills the space between us. I thought I saw her walk by the ski lodge when I was waiting in line inside to get lift tickets. My heart leapt and I almost ran out to call her name. And then my brain caught up with what my eyes thought they were seeing.

On our first run, laying down the first tracks that day after hitting the chairlift for the opening bell, the sun’s rays shone brilliantly through the clouds. I always call this God lighting. In that breathtakingly magical moment, I knew Nancy was with us, that this was her peeking through to whisper hello and good morning and I love you all.

What I wouldn’t give for a hug from Nancy right now. How she would have enjoyed being with us.

It was great to see how much fun the kids had, how life goes on for them with so much less heaviness. They happily and fondly and vocally remember her. We talk about her a lot. She is still very much with us, her positive spirit guiding us and encouraging us onward. She would absolutely be telling us to go, live, and enjoy life. And we are…but, for a while anyway, there’s also this mental leap of loss, this inescapable physical void that accompanies us.

I’ll close with this beautiful Maya Angelou poem that the amazing author, storyteller, life coach, and my kindred spirit Susie Rinehart sent to me recently. It expresses so eloquently what I am stumbling through here. Enjoy. And go out there and live!

They Existed, by Maya Angelou

“When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.”