Jumble

I have to write and send three sympathy cards today. Words seem distant with only the barest sense of comfort. I know words can be powerful. But they can't hold you. They can't give you your mother or daughter back.

Can they convey the true sympathy one feels to another?

How do I write something that doesn't sound trite and unconvincing?

I don't know what I have to offer. I know the pain I feel when I think of all the experiences she didn't get and that her children won't get. I know that my tia will never know the comforting her only daughter should have provided in the last hours.

I wonder how relief mixes with trepidation and anxiety and need.

There will now be a hole where there once was hope and disappointment and joy and sorrow ... because life is full of all these things and death robs us of all of them, too.

I wonder what my Tia will feel when she sees me. I am not the one but the closest to hers and so desperately different. She has always expressed her disappointment in hers by a outward disdain for me.

Now I am still here and hers is gone. Has my life been as full as hers? Does mine have the right to continue when hers does nor?

I am anxious to be near my family for the promise of human touch. I have been needing their hugs (I miss nothing more than my friends who hug just as a greeting) so much lately.

We are not an affectionate family. We are more on the stoic side (except when it comes to expressing anger), yet we are a deeply loving and fiercely loyal (well some of us) family.

I want to squeeze the mijo and feel the promise of his life ... that he can live it fully and with health and always knowing that we love and support him and want the best for him.

That should not be so hard for us to show - yet it is. Tough love has its limits as does being the toughy.

And here I go again crying in the library. Got to go home now so I can get sone work done.