Empty Spaces

Something about Holy Friday always makes me feel empty inside.

This has been years in the making. Even back then when my parents were so involved in the charismatic community and they rang up a busy schedule during the holy days. Me, I'll just space out or pretend that another Holy Week will pass without exerting overt expressions of faith from my soul. Now, without their initiations of Pabasa and Siete Palabras... I feel even more emptier.

I had a daydream today wherein I imagined that there will come a day when I will see an old couple walk past me in a mall or a parking lot somewhere in this universe. They will remind me of my parents and I won't be able to help the tears. They will see me crying and somehow, for some odd reason they approach me and comfort me. The old woman will be carrying a bouquet of roses and she'll give me one. They will both hug me and tell me, "You won't always be so lost. Just always look at the sun."

I will be so stunned from the direct coining of my Daddy's favorite phrase that they are gone before I fully recover.

I am so desperate for anything sembling closure for my parents that I will take whatever last best thing I could take a hold of. If I find it. Someday.

Kubler-Ross says Grief has 5 stages, and it is a cycle that the bereaved goes through: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. It may or may not follow this progression, but the more erratic the stages are, the more complicated the grief. As a Psych student, I can't help but to always try to gauge what stage am I experiencing at a particular time.

I'm disturbed because, I know for a fact I did not start with Denial. I started with Acceptance -- false acceptance it may be, but it helped me to think clearly about the little details to get through the next few months. I had to deal with organizing the funeral, the payment of hospital bills, payment of money we borrowed from people, etc. I had to figure out ways to manage the household because back then I was adamant to keep it running as usual.

Then Anger came because I failed at so many things. I couldn't run the household on my own; eventually we stayed longer in our uncle's house because the house in Fairview was just too far and too sad to come home to every night. I can't manage the household bills, I can't get a grip on the everyday aspects my parents were seeing to for most of their adult life. I got angry at them for leaving early. I asked God what His big plan is, hurting me and my family this way.

I got Angry and because I could not find the answers, I got sad. I succumbed to Depression, but even then, it was so skillfully ingrained in my whole persona that it didn't come out as the sulky kind of sadness. I managed to look smiley even as my body deteriorated. I got sick. You might remember the 2-week hospitalization which baffled all of my doctors. Nobody knew what was wrong with me, I defied diagnosis. I really thought I would die, and I didn't half mind. I wanted Death. To Follow into the dark the people I love most in Life.

Which brought me to Bargaining. After realizing that my inner depression wasn't gonna kill me, but it might debilitate me, I got a little sense back. So I made a bargain with God, I'll do what You put me here to do, but be sure to get me right afterwards. I want to go Home.

But what He wants me to do is so unclear. I don't know where to start. It is confusing, to say the least. I am floating in this earth, and I am losing my orientation.

Worst, I have come to Denial, where I believe any moment now --- any second forthcoming --- they will come back or I will wake up or I will go to Fairview, and if I am very careful, I might just see them waiting for me. It can't be true. They can't be gone.

If that isn't messed up, I don't know what is. Before Daddy died, I was about to ask him to bring me to a shrink, because I knew something wasn't right back then. I was already a depressive. Then when he went, I knew I had to get over it because I have to carry on for my Mummy. Then she died and I told myself I have to carry on for my sister. But looking at her, she who barely cries about them now, looking stronger than I am more than ever, I wonder who's carrying on for who.

The only thing I'm carrying on for now is the fact that I am Empty. And I still believe emptiness is the perfect vessel for filling up with hope.

Maybe, someday, it will come.