5 months.... and a spark.

5 months.  That's how long it has been since I lost Shelia.  Well, technically, I did not lose her.  She died.  She just plain died.  But 5 months is how long it has taken me to say "She died - she's dead."  Technically, I still don't know what she actually died of.  But I am coming to the realization, that it truly does not matter.  At the end of the day - she's dead.

I still hurt, but nothing on the scale of those that had known her all of her life.  And nothing on the scale of her family.  My loss is a small blip on the emotional scale of losses but it was still big to me. 

I've tried to make sense of why I was affected by a death of someone who I had only known for such a short period of time.  My guess is that in the short years (I think it was from 2005 until 2012 - she was completely incapacitated by this year), we did so much together.  In those short years, we rode through more states and miles than I can count.

We went through surgeries, deaths, loads of laughs and many arguments.  It was if time somehow knew that our relationship was on a short track and that we needed to fit as much as possible in those years to last a lifetime.  Yet still, I somehow expected more. 

I thought I would still feel her presence.  That I would be fortified by the fact that now, we could still ride together, we could go and see all the things that we still wanted to do - that I would be able to find the feet that I had lost so long ago when I got on that plane to the UK.

I think that is why I was listening so hard to try and hear Shelia.  I wanted someone to be my ground, to be my support, to give me purpose.  Since May of 2009, I've given up a career, graduated a child from college, another from high school and lost my best friend.  And I see nothing that gives me the light I need to find my feet.  I wanted Sheila to let me see.  I was wrong.  Shelia's dead.  She is gone and I know that she is not going find me.  I'm trying to make someone who is dead find me. 

I also know, that is impossible.  No one can "find me".  That is something that lies within myself.  I cannot pin my existence on "being" something other than what I become.  For me, "being" was defined by another person: a child,  a parent, a sibling, a coworker, a spouse, a friend, I have been depending upon someone else to define me.  This realization is the first spark I have seen.

Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I am beginning to see a small light.  Right now, that light is a bit like a distant star, it's flickers and ebbs in the night.  It doesn't wink, it doesn't glitter, it just appears and disappears in a black night like a memory that you can't quite grasp.  But, nonetheless, it is a light.  And with luck, it will move from a spark, to a distant star, to flame, and to a fire.  One that will light the ground up so much that I am able to see my feet. 

No one is going to find me.  My feet are already on the ground, I just need to move them and hope that the light will follow.