Today, I Just Broke Down

Sometimes it just happens...



Monday, January 19, 2009

Today, I just broke down.

I listened to Amy Goodman's show "Democracy Now". She simply showed video and pictures and played excerpts from Martin Luther King Jr. speeches. I was so impressed that I e-mailed all my friends advising them to share in the joy.

I listened to the speeches again. I've always been inspired by his articulate clarity and courage. He was a master at calling it the way it is - kind, compassionate, uncompromising and pinpoint accurate - in the classic rhythm and the roll and thunder of a Southern Baptist preacher.

I was reminded of Bob Dylan's "They Killed Him" - remembering Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus. I listened to that beautiful song a couple of times.

Then without warning, I just split open - started bawling, sobbing, trembling, crying out.

I'm usually pretty good at keeping it in. Sometimes when I'm alone, it just breaks through. A terrible sadness, greater than I knew, breached the levee of my self-control and flooded across the plain of my being - rolling over me, blinding me with emotional pain, paralyzing me, tumbling me, knocking me off my feet and submerging me beneath the boiling flood waters of grief unleashed.

Then my son walked into the house. There was no hiding it. His father was breaking. I apologized, I wiped my face, I took a deep breath, I tried to pull it together, but I just kept crying. I couldn't hold it back. I apologized, took another deep breath - Then I kept crying - and then I cried some more.

Bitter words erupted from me, again and again:

We kill them - What's WRONG with us? - WE KILL THEM! - WHAT IS WRONG WITH US?

I cried and sobbed and the pain in me growled and moaned up and out of my animal guts, up and out burning through my raw throat and snotty running nose... Raw, searing grief... the smell and taste of tears and grief... and it just went on and on... until it stopped.

Even now, 12 hours later, I'm still reconstructing a fragile, vulnerable self-composure. I'm functional but intermittently the tears start to come. I'm able to hold them back now. But I'm altered - shocked by the revelation of sadness so profound, churning just beneath my surface.

It was a release. I do feel lighter. At least now I'm conscious that it's there and conscious of how deeply it's been soaking into my soul.

I don't know the remedy for such a grief. Considering the source, there may no remedy. I don't know.


Today, I just broke down.

Grief volcano blew
red hot sadness poured its flow
now it sleeps again.

I'm usually pretty good at holding it back.

But sometimes when I'm alone.........