A Place To Fall Apart

Let me get this out of the way & then I can move on. People respond differently to stress and crisis. I've pretty much always been the kind who does the jump right in and take care of business thing and then later have some sort of release. Thankfully I've only really had to deal with two major losses in my life and then two or three times I would label as times of crisis.

For the losses, one was my very best friend. One of those friends who knows all about you but loves you anyway. She died in a terrible car accident which just so happened to be on her birthday. My dad had to call me at work, over two hours away from "home" to tell me the news. One of the hardest days of my life.

The second loss was the death of my father who lost his battle with cancer. On both of these terrible occassions, I jumped in and did whatever was necessary to help either my friend's family or in the case of my dad - my family. For both, the grief hit me much later. Weeks after Lila's death I was heading south on I-35 toward Ft Worth when sobs just overtook me. I remember pulling over and crying my eyes out and letting all that grief escape. My place to fall apart.

I was in Oregon on business a couple of months after my dad passed away and had gone a day early in order to spend some time seeing an area I had never been to. Driving down hwy 1 along the coast, I drove up into a scenic area and found a beautiful water fall ... and that's when the same grief hit again. My place to fall apart.

It's been pretty much the same with crisis. I deal best by determining what the fix is and then making a list and start crossing things off. Then later I find some place, off by myself - a place to fall part. This right now is more of a loss right now than it is a crisis, maybe that feeling will come in time. The problem though is that for some reason, maybe jet lag - maybe just needing to be a mom right now and not wanting the kids to see me being emotional, but for some reason I don't have the answer this time. I don't have the list. I don't even have it in me to even make a list right now. All I have is faith that it will all work out. But I'm feeling that need to find my place to fall apart. A chance to get it all out so I can get back to normal.