Danita, it still amazes me how the jagged edges of profound sorrow can poke through every attempt to move on. What really gets me is that expressing gratitude seems to be one of the biggest triggers of all, because as soon as I begin to thank God for the wondrously good things in my life, I'm hit once again by the reality that my loved ones aren't here to share in those wondrously good things in my life anymore. And then it all seems so empty - I would give EVERYTHING away just to have my family back.

BUT, we do have to move on. And gratitude is a positive path forward, even with its painful reminders...there are such tangible tensions/contradictions pulling us apart when we've suffered terrible losses in our life - nothing is ever as simple or secure as it was before the losses. So that when we feel joy, we also feel sorrow; when we feel gratitude, we also feel emptiness; when we feel any exhilaration of life, we also feel the agony of absence of loved ones to share that exhilaration with.

I would love to say it gets easier, but after your own experience, you know that it's not as simple as that. You cannot throw cliches into these kinds of wounds, the cliches just don't take us anywhere except into an even keener sense of loss (at least that's my experience) because we've lost everything, including the ability to neatly package the grief into a tidy box and pretend everything's normal.

I've been experiencing strange triggers just in the past few days, right out of the blue. I let myself cry, but am able to rise above it now and not let it take me too far down. And I'm even to feel moments of stand-alone-joy (ie, without the shadow of sorrow dulling the edges) now. That's a welcome relief. But there are still moments when I feel like a totally deflated helium balloon and wonder if/when I'll ever truly feel full again.