The Aftermath

 Music has always been my thing. It has been my coping mechanism, a healthier crutch than other mechanisms that might numb the pain. I can usually find a song, or a genre to help move me through the uncomfortable feelings and to help my heart and my mind to rest. Sometimes my heart and my fingertips have even rested on the "nostalgie" station on the tv; who knew that there would be times in my life that called for mellow French music? Today I was faced with a first. I was stumped and could not land on a song that did what it was supposed to do, and to be quite honest, it left me in a bit of a panic.

I am not a person who feels anything part way; never have been and probably never will be. I feel things with every part of me and sometimes it is a blessing and sometimes it is a curse. If we are friends you know that I have felt every joy and pain with you. I have been ecstatic at every first date you went on (Angie Robson, we have the dorm room under the door notes to prove our mutual excitement for each other), at every engagement, pregnancy, graduation, first job, new job, marriage, child, birthday. All of it. I have felt it with you. I have been crushed alongside you at the loss of a family member, at a cancer scare or diagnosis. At the loss of a pregnancy, the breakup of a marriage or at your struggle to start or grow your family.
My feelings have occasionally gotten in the way of maintaining close friendships, but they have also helped to strengthen the ones that remain. They have caused more arguments than I am proud of and they aren't always easy to control. I cry more than your average person, but than I also probably have more dance parties and laugh harder than many.

When I was nearly 14 my Papa passed away, and I have never managed to get myself together where he is involved. I don't have the Watson traits that let them deal with loss or difficulty with quiet dignity, or to stand by his grave without tears, or even to go to or leave the cabin without a lump in my throat. I don't have it, and as messy as I might be sometimes, I don't wish for it. I love and admire that Watson strength and I sometimes wonder if I'm the only one that didn't get any of it, but I am also ok with the outward feeling. The outward feeling has left me with a pile full of letters from my Nanny, filled with loving words and sentiments. The outward feeling has left me with a clear recollection of the way my Nanny's voice sounds when she says "I love you, too." It has left me with a sense of security because I can still feel our shoulders pressed against eachother when I snuggled up to her on the couch, and I can still feel her arms around me when I held onto a hug for just as long as I needed to.

Feeling everything deeply has left me in tears on far more nights over the last few months or to be honest, over the last few years, than I would prefer. It has left me in the space I am in right now where I don't want to listen to songs about loss or love because I don't want to be held down, but where I can't listen to songs about JOY because it doesn't fit either. Dear Nanny, you have left me in a bit of an empty in-between space that I don't quite know how to get out of.

There is peace in knowing somewhere inside me that after 25 long years apart, she is with my Papa again.

Dear Nanny, you have left me with a hole, feeling lost, feeling loved and feeling thankful - and as is par for my life, it is a mixture of feelings that I am not sure how to sort through. But I always manage, and I know that in time I will find the right song...maybe you will send it to me.

With every beat of my heart, I will be loving you.