...notes on the endpapers: anticipatory grief...

 I have spent the day waiting.

I have spent years waiting, but today, today has been The Waiting. 

Yesterday was the witnessing.  The sitting. The reading. The final flicker of hope’s wings against the walls of confinement, and, indeed, hope’s last gasp.  

Yesterday was the doing. Perhaps it was the continuing. Or the finishing.  The submitting. I know not.

Today was the waiting.

Tomorrow, I expect, will continue the waiting.  Tomorrow, and all the tomorrows until the message arrives that the ending occurred.

~~~

Today was the waiting.

Today I checked the phone repeatedly.

I thought that perhaps it was already done.  That the lethargy and lack of intake of a day, followed by the alertness of yesterday was a sign of transition.  I don’t know what I don’t know and can only guess.  I thought, perhaps.  But there has been no message. So, I am wrong.

Perhaps this will stretch…into an oblivion of days and weeks. Into a limbo.

The period of anticipatory end.

I have cried. I have felt tears like lava pour down my face.

I have shaken with an internal chill no amount of coffee can warm.

I have relied, heavily, on my eldest to do for my youngest all the things of living today…because I drift away into hours inside my own head.

I am waiting.

I am waiting for the end.  For this end.  One of two.

Two endings.  Leaving nothing but the scar tissue that has formed my whole being…my whole life.  Scars that directed choice…toward things that would hurt in familiar ways.

~~~

I am waiting for the end.

I am waiting for what happens next.

For…lightening…

For…softening…

For the sloughing off of armor, and the laying down of defense.

For the moment when she-me-we can step out of the shell and just…be…

For silence to fill the space where criticism and shame have shouted for decades.

For the seed to sprout…the spark to ignite…

For the Whole of Me to Take Up Space and Stand My Ground.

For the foundation I have slowly, carefully assembled of all my shattered pieces to finally be firm enough to build something lasting upon.

I am waiting to finally be free to raise myself up in the way that I raise my children.  With unconditional love.

I am waiting to see who I become in the end that is a beginning.

Today and tomorrow and tomorrow…

days of waiting…

days of holding space for what was and making space for what will be.