I  Am Drawn To Ground Zero

The most common questions I get from other parents who have lost a child sounds a lot like this – Does it get easier? When will it feel better? How many years has it been for you?

We are drawn to the hope of believing “time heals all wounds”.

Time doesn’t heal  – time simply changes the distance from ground zero, time moves me further away from the point of impact. The impact still exists, and just like other ground zero monuments,  I am drawn back to that moment of impact to relive its existence because I need to bring myself back to as close to ‘before’ as I possibly can.

That’s what my ground zero is, the smallest increment of time and space, that represents the biggest chasm of before and after in my life.

Sometimes I relish in going back to those moments and days before and after Brandon died. I want to be close to the moment of impact.  So close in fact, that maybe there’s a chance when I revisit there will be a wrinkle in time and I will be able to step back across that small incremental line of before and after.

But I know it’s not really a thin wrinkled line, before and after are wider than the Grand Canyon and what lies in the middle is uninhabitable terrain that can’t be crossed.

Again drawn to the hope of time – Hoping that time was wrong.

Hoping that time will turn a blind eye and let me step back, even if just for a moment, to say all the things left unsaid, give one last hug, and apologize for everything I could have done different… now that I know.

Hoping that if I visit my ground zero again I will find something I have missed – a clue, an explanation, or a piece of Brandon that I don’t want to forget.

I don’t plan my trips there; it’s more like ground zero lures me, reminiscent of the Sirens of Homer’s Odyssey, to the promise of time. Then I find myself exhausted from the search of that desolate place and the reality that time has remained unchanged.

I am drawn to ground zero.