Feelingless Thoughts to Commemorate Andy

Numb. Numb as this very day last year when I received the phone call: Natie's voice telling me there had been a tragedy. Numb as I was all that following week, feeling like the worst little sister for not being able to find my tears.

I am known for being the girl who draws from an endless pit of joy - smiling in the midst of all we face. What if its just because I'm too numb and emotionless to find my true devastation. I can logic and reason through everything, I can talk about things, I can understand it, but no emotion comes.

Nonetheless, I give you my stream of consciousness:

A random person's grave got flowers today because I couldn't be near to Andy's.

Give me words to speak; don't let my spirit sleep. Cause I can't think of anything worth saying.

Amazing how we go visit famous peoples' grave sites as if they are still there and not off somewhere else all this time. It's not like they are just sitting there - they've been away and gone, face to face with the eternity engraved on their hearts, for years and years.

I went to visit Andy one more time before the move to L'burg. The scribbled down thoughts I have recorded are skewed at parts - but I can't deny that they were felt - true or not:

- I sat by his lump in the ground for a few hours. I kept thinking: "He's right here! Right down there! Here he is! This is Andy! We're so close! I could pull back some of this ground and reach down and touch him!" As if he could hear me. As if his left behind, mutilated body was really "him."

- I can't believe it has been nearly a year since last summer. Since the incident. How quickly the tears return. (I wish they would return as quickly today, too)

- You forget how final things are until you're face-to-face with them again. This dirt is so fresh. Only a few spots of hopeful color sprouting up from all of the brown.

- How fast a life can change. Like the day she found out she was pregnant. Or the day we got the phone call Andy was dead.

- He is in the most undeveloped part of the graveyard; as if to say "here lies those unexpected ones we never thought would die." So young they hadn't even reserved a spot in the ground yet. The accidental area. The "oops, here's an extra plot of space" area.

- Someone had begun digging a small hole into the dirt on top of his crushed body. Was it to see if he was really down there? To try and reach him again? He's so close. He's right here.

- Eerily, I didn't want to push down on the dirt too hard; I didn't want to accidentally step on him - as if extra pressure would hurt his fragile body. Like he could feel. (The ridiculous ideas our minds construct...)

- There's only one first time for everything

- Why do I still need healing? It has been a year.

- God, be with us. Elohim.