No one ever tries to stop you from being happy, yet try to be sad and you'll get mauled by people telling you to cheer up. What if sadness is the truest, most real emotion you know at the moment? Is it any less valid than happiness? It's an emotion. As is happiness. It's not truth, it's merely a passing state of being. Or is it?
Thirteen years ago I watched my three children drive down the street away from me in a U-Haul and the sadness that struck me was real and full and deep. I knew from that day forward I wouldn't get to be with them on a daily basis ever again. You tell me I should just move forward, which I do, but everywhere in front of me is the vacuum created by the reality of their absence. I shattered into a million little pieces that day and admittedly that shattering caused me not to parent them as proactively as I could have. And that admission only adds to my grief.
I saw a picture of them on the Facebook site of a former babysitter of theirs. They were all sitting on 'our' couch at their new home just a few days after the departure. I had never seen the picture before, but it gave me a glimpse of them through a different lens. It saddened me that I couldn't be there in the picture with them. Time is the currency of life, not money, and it is time that was taken from us. One of the deepest sadnesses that I have noticed is that the time I gain can never make up for the time that was lost.
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