Sorrow

 

            Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I lie in bed and cry.  Its not that I’m any more sad at night than during the day, but I suspect that the day keeps me too busy to feel the sorrow welling up inside me.  With the darkness and silence my mind brings the pain up to the surface where it can bubble out as tears.  It stops almost as soon as it starts, and I’ve gotten to where I forget about it when I wake in the morning, but what I don’t forget is that I’m still here and she’s not.

            I can always feel it coming and I gave up trying to stop it long ago.  Somewhere in the hollow of my belly rests a bit of entropy, something dark and empty, but strangely substantial enough to make my organs shift in order to provide it room.  I feel it gently push its way upward, scratching my soul with delicate tendrils of barbed darkness, daring me to stop it, but knowing that I’m powerless to do so.  It travels up my throat, I try to swallow it back down, but my last line of defense shatters like a fallen wine glass upon the kitchen floor.

            The tears come in bitter streams down my cheeks and I do my best to keep from sobbing.  My wife is sleeping next to me, her steady breathing a comfort that helps bring me back from the agony.  She would be upset if she knew how often this happens, not because she would think me weak for crying, but because I wasn’t sharing my agony with her.  She has enough pain to deal with and doesn’t need any more from me.

            I try to overcome the tears with the good memories: the way she looked, the feel of her in my arms, the way she smelled.  At first it makes the pain more intense, sharp and cutting, cleaving my heart in two, but from out of the wound comes the happiness I felt during my time with her.  Seeing her in my minds eye, feeling the caress of her angelic spirit, the whisper of thoughts telling me it’s okay, that she’s all right. 

The pain drifts away and I swallow the tears and the darkness becomes a little lighter than the night before.  Sleep steals over me and I know she’s watching out for me, my Hailey, my little girl.