I've been reading this forum, every so often, for a while, not really sure why, since the "big" loss in my life was nearly 20 years ago:

My father died in October of 1987, the day they pulled Baby Jessica out of the well.

I remember seeing the baby emerge from the earth, pulled out on a sort of papoose-like contraption, & thinking how mean the universe was, to show me a new life being saved from the earth just at the time my father was being returned to the earth.

Later, of course, I realized that that's the way it always is & always has been, & that the timing might have been a mercy in disguise: at least I did have it put in front of me that there *is* new life emerging in this world.

Yesterday, my 85-year-old aunt, my father's sister, called & asked me to get some soil added to my father's grave, since it's all sunken in.

I promised her I would.

Then I had to call her back.

I couldn't remember where my father is buried.

As I tried & tried to think of the things that happened during that time, I realized that there's quite a lot that I simply do not remember.

I don't remember the hour-&-a-half drive to my home town, not one bit of it (thank goodness a friend drove me).

I remember looking at him in the casket & telling my other aunt that that was not my father.

She didn't even bat an eye:

she said, "yes, sylvia, that's your daddy. Look at him again."

Thank goodness for my aunts.

I don't remember the funeral, don't remember who spoke, who sang, don't remember driving to the cemetary or going home.

It was a severe blow, & the losses you all post about are severe blows, too, so:

Be kind to yourselves, be patient with yourselves, when you can't function like well-oiled machines after sustaining this kind of loss.

Give your minds/hearts/bodies/souls time to recover, & give yourself the care that you have to have in order to recover.

One other thing that I wanted to share is a dream I had maybe a year later.

In the dream, I was walking with my father through a wild area in a terrible thunderstorm, thunder, lightening, terrible winds, dark sky, rolling clouds, very scary, & I kept begging my father, "give me your hand, or you'll get lost, give me your hand & let me help you."

He finally gave me his hand, & we struggled through the storm.

Then we came to a bridge across a turbulent bayou or bay.

It was a wood & rope bridge, & it was pitching violently in the storm.

I grasped his hand & we started across.

A sudden gust of wind turned the bridge nearly sideways, my hand slipped, I grabbed the rope, & my father went into the water.

I held the rope with both hands & looked into the water, trying to find him, crying & saying I was sorry.

Then he popped to the surface & smiled at me.

He had turned into a sort of human-otter hybrid, and he swam away joyfully.

and I realized that I had to let my father go.

Whatever he was, wherever he was, he was free.

I was the one in the storm, in turbulence.

so I turned to face the wind & make my way across the bridge.

that's what we have to do.

Bless you all.