Naked Face with No Make-Up

Feelings are complex.  Most feelings cannot be accurately conveyed through words. But we try.  And we use similes.  

Like now.  My feelings are very complex.  My simile of choice is a "well-balanced, diversified stock portfolio."  Like the pie chart that describes your mutual fund portfolio.  A percentage of this, three percentages of that, a laundry list that adds up to a hundred.  That's my current state of mind in relation to my loss.  

A writer friend told me people need to compare in order to relate.   

I am unable to describe how I feel.  I have voids.  I have many Eric Holes and they will not be filled, cannot be filled, by anything.  No persons, no things, no memories.  Nor is it necessary to fill them.  I can have plenty of great memories, AND voids. Memories and voids are not mutually exclusive.  It is not sad or depressing to have voids.  It is life.  

It is being real.  And staying real.  It's exposed like a woman's naked face with no make up.  

My friends want me to feel better.  And will try to console with comforting thoughts like "Eric is alive as long as he is in our memories."  No.  That is not true.  Eric is dead.  And will remain dead, despite him being in our memories.  Our MEMORIES of him may be alive; HE is not alive.  Big difference.  Words matter.  Not pretty, but factual. 

I use the words die, dead, and death, because they are entirely appropriate. Eric did not pass on, or pass away.  He wasn't 89 years old waiting to expire on his death bed.  That would be passing on.  He chose to die on his own conscience, at his timing, with his own judgement.  That was also factual.  No need to skirt around that.  

Summer nears.  Joyous Facebook posts abound with graduations, weddings, vacations, summer camps, kittens and puppies.  I have nothing momentous to post. Not because I don't feel joyous moments, but because my feelings are complex. 
I feel voids.  

Iris of My Heart
Photograph courtesy of Adrian Rus