[DAY 117 OF THE DEEP END PROJECT]
Displaced.
I was chatting with a friend via FB messenger today. We were catching up on how we are both doing.
She told me she’s moving and we all know how hectic that is. Then she told me that her mom has gone to their home country.
She said “I feel displaced. Hangin’ in there.”
Displaced.
My brain caught on to that word. I let it roll around in my mouth.
It traveled all the way from my brain to my heart, where it finally rested.
How can I describe the feeling?
That feeling of the word clicking onto my heart.
The closest I can come to is when you are working on a puzzle. You have all but one piece. It could be the corner piece or the one right in the center.
Without that piece, there’s a hole. Nothing makes sense. The puzzle itself remains incomplete.
But when you find that piece and you put it in that hole, the puzzle is now complete. It makes sense.
Have you ever felt that way?
But how can a word do that? I’m sure that’s what you are thinking.
And I’d agree with you. Or I would have until the moment when I felt how it felt – – for “displace” to make its way to the big gaping hole in my heart and click on the missing puzzle.
Followed by the realization “Oh that’s what I have felt these last 3 years and 5 months”
Displaced.
Now I have a word to label my grief. I can now put a finger on it.
3 yrs and 5 months ago, my mom left. For her permanent home.
Displaced is definitely the right fucking word for the aftermath.
Grief is such an asshole.
It latches on to you and it may ease up once in a while, but it never leaves.
The other day I was reading on the couch when my 10 yr old came and put his head on my lap as he gave a sigh “Aaaaah”
Without even knowing his body let out a sigh of relief as he got back to base.
His safe zone.
His center.
3 yrs and 5 months since my center moved.
I remember feeling that tug in my heart, “I will never get to do that again”
Displaced is how I feel.
How grief feels.
Off Center.
Off Home Base.
3 years and 5 months. And many to come…..