Out of the darkness of ages past

One of the defining moments in my life was on this day in 1986 when my mother died.  I had known people who died before, but none of them had given me life.  Every night when I went to sleep I felt a stab of disbelief flow over me.  Every morning when as I started to become conscious I felt my stomach drop out as I remembered that she was gone.

There were other things going on in my life that were equally hard, but they didn't affect me as deeply as that moment, or so I believed at the time.

The darkness of the past can sometimes leak into the present.  It is as if the creator is saying, "You didn't figure this one out before so you get a second chance." 

Life is so much bigger than right and wrong, yes and no, black and white, good and bad.

Like the ocean, decisions spill over into everything.  They lap up against the edge of the earth and each other in unending cycles.  They muddy the tidal pools that seem protected and apart, erode the rocks that lie along their edges, change things that seem like they shouldn't be part of the equation at all.

The decisions I couldn't make years ago come back to haunt me.  Could things have been better, or might they have been worse?  It's hard to imagine them being worse.  Yet I know of similar situations where things were worse. The stakes are so high.

There is nothing easy about dismantling relationships.  They might even be bigger and more powerful than oceans.

Once more I find myself going to sleep and waking up in darkness and pain. Only now it never really goes away.  I still don't know the answers.  I still can't predict the ramifications.  I only know that they are enormous, huge, unfathomably incomprehensible.  I don't know what to want, or hope for, or pray for, or imagine.

Handing it off I think, "thy will be done-not mine," and hope that is not the ultimate cop out.