Holding Back

Every day, every hour, maybe even every minute, I hold back.  I hold back the pain, the tears the devastation.  Every day, every hour, maybe even every minute I think of something else.  The baby is a constant distraction, my husband, the guilt of a mother not having done this and not having done that.  Every day, every hour and maybe even every minute there is something else to do, breakfast lunch and supper for the baby, for myself, supper for the husband, laundry, cleaning oh a walk....did I go outside today?  Every day, every hour and every minute I ignore my grief.  I wall it up with some grout and brick.  Every day I make a new wall.  The space gets smaller and smaller.  I'm so tired from building walls.  It gets harder to breathe in this small space.  It gets harder to hide from my thoughts pouring out of my broken heart.  Oh GOD! My daddy, my dear daddy is gone.  Tears escape from my eyes.  I wipe them up and look somewhere else for a distraction, but the walls are so close there is no where to look.  I leave the inside of my head and search for a distraction admits reality.  Ah my baby girl, what a smile, Grandpa would have loved to make you smile. Damn!   Quick my husband is coming in, I don't want him to see me cry.  There is nothing he can do about it anyway.  It's not like he can take away the pain of losing my father.  Damn! Why did I have to think it!  I'm a mess and I don't feel like it will get better.  I will just be the master of holding it back.  What scares me is that I don't know when I will lose it.  I can feel when I start to get tired of building my walls.  A day or two after I realize that, thats when I lose it.  The only thing that can save me is an ugly cry.  Fists balled up, face in my pillow gripping the sides and a silent wail escaping my open mouth.  Then the walls crumble, I clean up and prepare my grout and brick for when I will be building my walls again.  My aunt told me that it is not something a person ever gets over.  She lost her daddy 20 years ago.  She was crying on the phone with me as she was trying to comfort me.  I don't want to deal with this for the next 20 years.  The only way I could stop dealing with this would be to erase the memory of his death, but then I'd be looking for him.  Would this be frustrating or a false hope?  Now it is just to definite, no wiggle room.  He's dead, gone, I will not be seeing him again.  Or if I erase the memory of him altogether......I never want to do that but  for he sake of arguing, I would have to erase all those  lives that interconnected with his, including my husband's and my daughter's.  No, I have to deal with this pain.  This pain is the deepest, most devastating pain I have ever known.  How is it possible to feel so empty with longing yet so full of love for the one you've lost.  I must have been so very loved by him if it hurts this much.  I must have loved him so much more than I ever thought possible, for it to hurt this much.  I never want to feel this pain again.  That is a selfish sentiment. Because if I never feel this pain again, then my loved ones would have lost me first, and I would never wish this pain on them.  Moments like this is when I realize just how strong I really am.  For me to decide to shoulder the pain of losing others instead of them losing me, helps me understand that I CAN survive the death of my father.  He would want me to stop crying for him, thinking that he doesn't deserve all these tears.  But he does deserve every last tear that will fall from my eyes.  I just want him to hug me and to tell me to get over it.  I just want my daddy.