Ups and Downs

This week has had its ups and downs.  I started out feeling optimistic after Easter.  Literally for the first time since Webb died, I started to have some fleeting moments where I felt like things were going to be ok.  I even started thinking about the future (which is usually too scary).  However, that feeling did not stick around for long.  Some close family members have been faced with a tremendous challenge, and I have been thinking again about why bad things happen to good people and God's completely unpredictable plan for us all.  Webb, as usual, has been at the forefront of my mind, and he has become the focus of all of these thoughts.  I have been spending a lot of time just staring at his pictures.  I look into those beautiful blue eyes and try to take myself back to that moment captured in the picture...it seems so far away.  I cannot always conjure up a clear memory of Webb, and that scares the hell out of me.  What if I can't remember??  What if I start to lose the only thing I left - the pictures in my mind??  I already feel so disconnected to the person I was December 23.  I feel like she was a little girl I was friends with in my past.  The way I thought about things then seems so immature, so unrealistic.  How did we get so far from that place where everything was safe and warm?  How did we go from our biggest problems now being 100th on the list?  How have we gone from imagining the future with our three healthy, smart, growing boys, to this nightmare where one is in a cemetery?  I want to know why, yet I am not strong enough to understand.  I am so tired.  I feel like I am putting on a front all day long just so I don't crumble.  Is that what you do to survive?  I suppose it must be.  After all, if we were allowed to feel how we wanted, we would probably die from the pain and exhaustion.  I have no trouble talking about my situation.  I can set my jaw and speak about the hospital, the funeral and the aftermath - often without shedding a tear.  Sometimes my ability to do that scares me, but it is a part of who I am and how I have always handled things.  It is not denial.  I do not know exactly how I do that, but it is so contrary to how I feel on the inside, that it almost feels like I am playing a role in a movie.  A horror movie.  Where do we go from here?