Every time I think these words darkness closes around and and a weight presses down on me. It feels like scuba diving… as you down further and further the pressure gets greater all around you. There is no way to escape it, it just is.

At these times I struggle in my own mind to understand what I am feeling. Panic. Loss. Guilt. Desperation. Pain. But more. And is seems unbearable and yet I am still alive. The minutes pass. The days pass. When I read the quote below by Mark Twain about receiving the news of the death of his daughter I felt that he was able to put words to an idea that I can’t….

“It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared
can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live. There is but one
reasonable explanation of it. The intellect is stunned by the shock
and but gropingly gathers the meaning of the words. The power to
realize their full import us mercifully wanting. The mind has a dumb
sense of vast loss- that is all. It will take mind and memory months
and possibly years to gather together the details and thus learn an
know the whole extent of the loss.”