the Aberration

I miss you, Dad.

I never really believed that there was anything in the world that the human mind was incapable of dealing with. Until my mind was faced with the task of processing the completely unfathomable, incomprehensible, impossible fact that you were gone.

Not only gone. Dead. One day you were there, smiling at me, ready to give me anything, loving me. The next, the world did no longer contain you. And that was impossible. That night, when I lay awake, I understood the tears and the pain that was ripping me to shreds. But my mind, my logic and intelligence, my readiness to accept and believe in irrefutable facts, failed me for the first time. The fact was there, my mind tried to grapple it but failed - slipped back a few steps - tried again, with the same result. That entire horrible night, not to mention days and weeks and months afterward. My mind was like a faulty recording, skipping back every time it reached that scratch in the disc, that glitch in the software, repeating the same sequence endlessly. Nightmarishly.

You, no longer. You, nowhere.

And faith, which usually steps in, could not help. Faith held me up, cushioned and soothed me with words like "heaven, immortal soul, meet again", but faith is in another dimension. Comfort from others, with words like "you are not alone", was invaluable and absolutely life-saving, but comfort is also there in the other dimension. Reality is here, and reality is harsh and blinding and relentless.

Someone put it beautifully (quote from here): "... she's been in this vague in between lifes world. One life of what you knew is passing away, dying on the winds while the other is opening up and brightening to blind and bleach out your brain. It hurts like stabs in the heart."

Eventually, I must have learned to live with that fact that had blinded and bleached out a part of my brain. My mind is no longer skipping. That scratch or glitch in the weave of the universe is still there, always will be. But I glide past it with a respectful nod, and move on.

Usually. Every now and then my mind stumbles over it from an unexpected angle and falls flat on its face, painfully. And then, again, the shock and horror: You, no longer. You, nowhere.