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Monday, January 31, 2011

Knowing...

I'm lying awake feeling like I'm going to vomit with a flutter in my chest that can only be described as the beginnings of a panic attack. I've just had a flashback of the night Andie died and can't go back to sleep.

I'm trying to think what triggered this tonight and it must have been a conversation I had with my mom earlier in the weekend. I told her that I had known Andie was not going to make it before the ambulance even got there. She was surprised that I had never shared this with her; she too knew he wasn't going to make it then, but had never shared that with me. I've never spoken it to anyone really because to admit it feels like I gave up hope somehow. It's the same reason I couldn't tell him I loved him that night- It was like admitting defeat if I told him I loved him for what I instinctively knew would be the last time. And that by somehow doing that, I would be the one to seal his fate. Not a responsibility I was willing to accept. So I held out a tiny sliver of hope, but something deep inside me just knew...

So tonight the flashback is about that night and me trying to figure out the exact moment when I knew that he was going to die. Replaying it moment by moment to see if I can pinpoint when the "knowing" came. I don't recall having a conscious thought that he was going to die but I knew it on an intuitive level. It was purely gut instinct, but I knew. It washed over me at some point. I remember when we finally got in the ambulance and I thought I should pray, but for a split second I wondered if it was worth it because I knew it wouldn't make a difference. I was already angered with God and feeling resigned to the fact that he wasn't going to help me...though that too was not a conscious thought. Just a feeling deep inside...but I prayed anyway holding on to that tiny sliver of hope cause my mind could not accept what my instinct already knew.

I had the same gut level sense of "knowing" the day I learned my father died. I had gone to school like a regular morning that day. The few days prior my dad had been having some heart problems but the doctors had sent him home- everything was going to be okay. The assistant principal came up to me in the cafeteria and told me to go get my things because my mom was coming to get me...in that moment, though no other details were given to me, I knew my dad was gone. Again, I didn't have the conscious thought that he was dead but I intuitively sensed it.

It's a feeling of deep foreboding that comes with this sense of knowing. It's painful, gut-wrenching, and literally heavy. It's something that is very hard to even put into words. It's intuitive, instinctual, primal. There is a millisecond of extreme focus and peaceful acceptance of fate when the "knowing" creeps in but then your mind takes over again, trying to will it all to be different, fighting to make the impossible possible. Your mind is the last to catch up, but your body knows, your soul knows.

Your heart knows...

4 comments:

  1. so well said...even in shock and denial...you know and you can never "unknow" it.

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  2. Don't you wish you could turn your brain off sometimes? I was the opposite, though... I was completely blindsided, but I still stay up a lot of nights and replay when I got the news and can still feel how it literally knocked the wind out of me. I guess they both end the same way- no sleep and that terrible hollow feeling in your stomach.

    I love your blog, you put lots of things that I feel into much more eloquent words than I could. I'm thinking of you, and I hope you ended up getting some sleep!

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  3. I understand this very much because I 'knew' too. Except I kept blurting it out the day Chris died and felt so guilty. Thank you for posting these hard moments. Honestly, they truly help me.

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  4. I knew when Malachi was goign to die. I even left the room because I didn't want to be there when it happened. Instead they "brought" him back so Bena nd I could holdhim as he "Left". Does that mean all those prayers were in vain? I think it just meant God knew more than us and took them at the perfect time for them (not us). Praying for you!

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