I don't know where to start...it has been four years since you left this earth, and it just doesn't seem fair... I sit here tonight and I wonder what you would look like today, and what your life would be like. It's still so hard to believe sometimes that you are gone. Life has changed so much in the last four years. Sometimes it's hard to fit you into the present. I try to experience your spirit as much as possible, but it never feels like enough. I always feel cheated....
Cheated out of your life... Cheated out of everything that was meant to be... Cheated out of a friendship... Cheated out of innocent happiness and that feeling that I could never be touched in such a profoundly painful way.... Cheated out of your laugh and smile, and your hugs and kisses, and everything that you brought to me when you arrived in my life.
I miss you always, and my heart physically aches every day, even when I don't notice it. The hurt never dies, it always lives and it feeds on my misery and pain for its nourishment. I contemplate the purpose, if there is one for me to have to endure such pain and loss. I wonder if I have thought narcissistically to expect that my life should have gone on without this kind of suffering.
I read and research every word I can find spoken or written about the afterlife and the soul. I ponder all of the theories and I rest when I find one that gives me peace. But the peace never lasts. The questions never will cease. I can't be satisfied for long with no true understanding of this life and the next. My soul remains unrested and unsure. I return to those torturous feelings of helplessness and fear and loss. I exist in the brutal reality that our time together on this earth is over. Your life was extinguished, and I loathe the darkness that ensues beyond your earthly existence. I strain to feel your light and your presence. Sometimes I do... Yet I am still left with these empty aching arms, and the reality that they will never feel you again.
Don't misinterpret my intentions dearly beloved daughter, for I will have any kind of relationship possible. I feel your presence with me and I interact with you on a spiritual basis now. For that, I am immensely and truly grateful. I don't know how long my soul could bear it if I were not afforded that ability. It's just so hard to exist when you can't understand that which you so desperately seek to learn.
Although my heart and mind have been opened in various ways through the loss of you, I am plagued with the quest for the unattainable and the uncertain. I feel sometimes as though I cannot rest until I know for sure that we will meet again. I realize, but do not wish to accept, that I can never have the proof that i so desperately desire.
I am told that this is where faith comes in... But I find now that faith no longer satisfies me. It feels sort of empty now, whereas before it made me feel full. God is an enigma and my blind faith can no longer sustain my hunger for truth.
Although I dread the sound of the words, I have learned so much because you died. My life has reached a level of authenticity that I feel could not have been obtained any other way. Your death has opened more than just my eyes. But I anguish at the notion that I may have had to lose you for this to happen to me. So often I daydream and long to go back to that time when you were here and life was good and I was blissfully blind and happy. Like an innocent child, I was unaware of the harsh and brutal realities of life that lurked in the shadows just waiting for the chance to steal my innocence and scar my soul.
As I ponder these questions and run the gauntlet of these faithless thoughts and notions, I hear your voice dear child. My mind, and not my ears, hear you say "I am proof". I sit back and breathe.... The relief washes over me as a smile reaches my lips and an exhale of doubt forces its way from my inside. I remember that you are the proof of it all. The proof of life and death, and the love that exists beyond both. You are my light Lauren Elizabeth Rodney, you guide my blinded soul through the deepest depths of darkness. You are my proof and my truth and my promise. I trust you and I give you my hand and my heart to lead me and guide me through the unknown.
Love always,
Your adoring Mother
9/25/13