Images in my head

At the moment, it feels as though I am going through some kind of grieving transition.
In one sense, I am buoyed by the spring. By the daffodils on my kitchen table, and the sun in the pale blue sky.
Right at the beginning, when the snow was on the ground, a friend told me a relative who had recently lost her mother, found comfort in the changing seasons. At the time, the thought scared me.
I did not want to get to spring. I did not want to feel forced to smile just because everyone else was rejoicing in winter's demise.
Now that I am here, I sense the change and I am not so scared.
Bear is inside me and everyday that passes does not change that.
So spring has sprung and I am able to appreciate the flowers. But things are never that simple when you're wading through all this grieving muck. Despite the promise outside, suddenly, something inside me keeps taking my mind back to that Thursday night.
The worst night of my life.
I am minding my own business and then, without warning, it's there at the front of my thoughts, flashing like old slides in a creaky projector, through those terrible moments. It make me nauseous.
I realise, as I endure the film of Bear's demise, that this unconscious playback, is something I am going to have to learn how to weave into the structure of my life.
As if it isn't bad enough to suffer the pain of losing your first born (and such a beautiful boy, at that), I also have the memories. Terrible, haunting moments that will never lose their clarity and pain.
When they flick through the story of the beginning of the end, I get this heaviness across my sternum. Mr Death is standing on my chest.
It is the worst sort of punishment on a girl who is trying so hard to be ok.