Rattled

So recovery from trauma, from grief, from anything probably always goes only in fits and starts. One of those sayings we should all drop is that it gets a little better every day, because that sets us up wanting things to get a little better every day and when it doesn't we add it to our stockpile of things we suck at.  We should instead say "every now and then you'll notice that the hard stuff gets a little easier to bear" and leave it at that. Today I learned that my neighbor passed away, just over three weeks after his cancer diagnosis was made, and leaving a daughter in my age range and his wife of fifty years grieving, as well as many other family members and friends.  I was able to run over and give comfort and say nice things but I came home and was rattled and had to have a brief lie down.  When I realized I was not just mourning him and the loss of a father and husband, but also feeling some ugly nasty feelings I don't want to have, I had to get back up. Also, the phone rang and I am trying to actually take calls and stop avoiding people and things, so I answered, to hear from a dear friend who checks up on me now and then.  This friend has the distinction of being one of my few friends who has had the awful experience of losing a child, and having had the trauma fairy come to wave her PTSD wand at her family.  I told her how I'd gotten rattled and she told me that she lost her footing a few days ago when she learned that a neighbor who, like her, had previously lost an adult child who died in a random fatal traffic accident, has now suffered the same again, now losing one of her teenaged twin girls in a head on traffic accident and the other remains in very serious condition.  This mom is driving back and forth from one city to see her injured daughter in the hospital and to see the other at the morgue in a different city.  I can't believe it even though it is surely real.  The horror that family is going through astounds me. And I can't believe that you can survive the worst of the worst, get on the other side of the abyss, and it can happen again.  I can't go through mine again, I know I can't.  So, say a little prayer for moms in distress.