Photo by Colin Delaney
Countless times, we have all used the expression, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, to encourage ourselves to be strong, that a difficult situation is coming to an end. But what happens if you find yourself in a situation where there will never be a light at the end of the tunnel? Your difficult situation is never going to end?
When Colin died, when any parent loses a child, that light at the end of the tunnel forever goes out. Suddenly, there was no more trying to get Colin better. There was nothing new to try. There was no more hope to be a family again, living life and all its experiences. There stopped being a reason to keep moving forward, there was no light to move towards. It was just… gone.
So, what do I do? I ask myself that question every single day. At the start of the day. And again, at the end of the day. What can make me move forward?
The desire to sit down in the dark is over powering, to not see or feel anything because when I look to where the light is supposed to be and it is not there, the feeling of panic is crippling. I would imagine for any parent like me, that has lost a child, the feeling is over whelming to all of a sudden be in a world that feels so very wrong.
I am working so hard to figure out how to live in this darkness and I am beginning to realize that I need to make my own light, find ways to move forward even without that light of Colin getting better pulling me towards it. Colin took this picture in the tunnel at his school, that connects the high school to the middle school. He would walk home though this tunnel. He came home one afternoon and shared this photo, he really liked it. I thought how great, that he has the perspective to look at something like a concrete dark tunnel and instead see the bright light shining in front of him. It also looks like what I would imagine is the stereotypical version of when a person dies and “goes towards the light,”
I am not an overly religious person, I wish I was because then maybe this missing Colin would be eased a bit by believing, without question, I would get to see him again. Yet, if there is a white light at the end of the tunnel of life, then it would sure make sense why life is so damn hard. We don’t look for the light at the end of the tunnel when we are having fun, only when things are crappy. Every day we are all doing our best, to get to where? The end of life? Or to the white light at the end of the tunnel? To something better? I do not know, I wish I did.
All I do know, is I am going to keep trying to make my own light by doing things that create light. Being kind, helping others, laughing when I can. Telling people about Colin. Sharing what I have with others, easing the pain of these kids fighting cancer. Not letting the dark and the unfathomable pain I feel dictate the choices I make but rather realize all this intense pain of missing Colin is stemming from the intense love I have for him. And I suppose, that pain I feel is worth every second of time I had with him.
Until I lost Colin, I never really looked at life as a bigger picture, as I was more focused on the here and now, what needed to be done for the nearer future, not 10, 20, 30 years from now. But boy, I sure think about it now since I have to live the rest of my life without Colin here. I can’t help but think, we are all heading in the same direction to the end of our lives yet, we don’t often stop and reflect on what we want that journey through the tunnel to look like. What we want to accomplish, who we want to be and how will be become what and who we want to be? And it all needs to get done, before we get to that light. I suppose Colin’s death forced me to think about it, at first unwillingly but now with more mindful intent. I would recommend you give it some thought for yourself.
~ Melissa