Grief

I know grief is somewhat off-topic, but all of us have some sort of grief in our lives. Grieving our lost innocence, our lost hopes, our cruel scars.......
But this is going to be about my daughter's death. Gracie was only 15 years old, it was July 4th 1997. I had gone to an old friend's wedding in Virginia, and Gracie was supposed to stay with our next door neighbors.
She went home alone to take a nap, and when she got up, she realized the neighbors had gone to the fireworks at the beach without her.
She walked to their parents home about a mile away to seek a ride, and after making some phone calls, nobody was willing to drive her, so she headed out hitch-hiking. Somebody in a white van picked her up, and shortly afterwards threw her out the back of the van at 55+ mph, and she was struck by the following car, and dragged 200 yards before the driver realized it was a person they hit. The driver panicked and flipped their car over in a ditch.
Grace was dead imediately.

On my trip to Virginia for the wedding, as I was riding the greyhound bus,
I saw a car completely engulfed in flames in the slow lane, and a horrible feeling came over me. I wanted to turn around and go home. Bus drivers don't do that though, so I continued on the trip.
My friend and her family met me at the bus, and we went to see fireworks near their home. around 10 pm, I suddenly started having my period, 2 weeks early. Again, I felt something was really wrong. I had no way to go home that night, so I stayed for the wedding as planned.
After the wedding on July 5th, I drove my friends car as they rode in the back seat, and we headed to Myrtle Beach where they were honeymooning.
I lived about 15 miles from there. When we arrived at their hotel, I phoned my next door neighbors to come and get me, P. E. said he was too drunk so he sent someone else to get me. The ride back was strangely quiet, and the driver insisted we stop at his parents house. When we came inside, I suddenly felt like I was walking through heavy fog. There were lots of people there, and my pastor and I was introduced to the coroner.
They told me there had been an accident...... Grace was dead. They had already done an autopsy. They lied to me and told me that she had just been standing in the highway and it was an unavoidable accident. They suggested she must have been on drugs. I told them they were wrong, she was not using drugs and would never stand in the road. It was shortly after 10 pm July 4th when she died.

The following days were a blur to me. I had to be heavily medicated and could hardly walk without holding on to someone or something.

It was years before I started to function in anything like a normal way.
I have never slept normally since then. When I sleep, I have nightmares.
Even a short nap like earlier today, and I have dreams of Grace and images of death.

I try to get out of sleep and get something done around here. It is crippling.

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Other grief - nightmare things are attached to my childhood abuse.
If you have read the rest of the blog it will come as no surprise.
I have finally stopped having the nightmares about faceless people stealing my baby boy, it plagued me constantly since 1967 when J.F. was born until we finally dealt with the truth of his birth in october 2009.
42 years of nightmares and visiting baby stores to look at baby boy clothes..... and sometimes hearing a small child cry [inside my head like interior locution]. My mind was trying for years to push me to remember.
There is a lot of grief, and anguish. Now I am struggling with anger at my mother, for not only covering up my father's crimes, but for forcing me to live a lie and treating me like crap. My parents are in my nightmares too, and I just want them to go away. They just can't stay dead. Sometimes I dream of them climbing out of their graves......... and the rest of the dream I am trying to get them back into the ground.

It's all grief.