it is after midnight and i am pacing, in the dark, the white tiles of this godforsaken hotel room, gritty underfoot with spilt sand. i want to howl and sob, but instead i sniffle and struggle for breath, suppressing this rush of emotion, so as not to wake my sleeping family. i cannot take it outside because i am surrounded by buildings, balconies, other hotel rooms.

i am breathless with my aching. i feel i will never recover. and in a way i feel i never want to recover. i can summon no vision of life without her, nor do i want to.

this is a heartache of monumental proportions. a heartache like no other i have ever experienced. those other trifling heartbreaks seem so trivial. when grieving a lost lover i have been able to believe that there would be another. i have had faith that i would again be happy, that i was better off without that other, better off, even, to be alone. there were platitudes for such heartbreak.

rationally, i know that people survive this, and go on to lead lives which are fulfilling and happy. i just can't really feel that with even a modicum of certainty.

i cannot believe that the last four years have happened, or that they are over. i find myself thinking 'my daughter died' and it seems that i am lying, that this is not true. it just seems such a terrible dream. and yet i feel so utterly wounded by all i had to witness.

i recall the grace with which maia bore her illness, her disfigurements, her incremental loss of independence and dignity, and it physically hurts me to remember. i just don't understand the why of it.

i was raised a catholic, with a belief that all is written and my adult studies of esoterica and philosophy ingrained in me a certainty that there are reasons for everything, and that although it all seems random it is not. and there's the rub - surely there are reasons for her suffering; surely this was her soul's purpose, and mine to witness. but for fuck's sake, WHY??

from this distance i think that i do not fear death. death offers to me a possibility of understanding, of seeing from a different perspective, a hope of knowing the whys and wherefores of this shitty and painful human embodiment. and somewhere it is written that i have to just go on, and get over this monumental grief, and keep on living, until it is my time to die.

tonight, pacing, i just can't seem to see how do that.....