Why does January 11th always have to be so fucking hard? It was one year ago today that he was standing at the window of our beautiful castle gazing at everything he’d built from NOTHING … literally NOTHING … after having spent a lifetime running from the pain of having been thrown away by his “mother”. I’d been taking down the Christmas decorations, and I’ll never forget it EVER. Especially in that we were just about ready to take Gina’s birthday flowers to her grave.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I’d rounded the corner only to find him standing there blankly staring out over the field behind our property with a single tear rolling down his cheek. “Zack? What’s wrong?” … and then he turned to look at me with a lost and hopeless look in his eyes that will haunt me forever. It leveled me at the core with that all too familiar adrenaline dump I’d come to know before in moments of panic and fear.

Catherine, I can’t feel anything anymore.

I was so physically ill, because I knew JUST what he meant by those five seemingly simple words. Over the years, I’d gotten to know the silent language that was often spoken by his face, eyes, and tears when he hadn’t said a word. Despite being surrounded by every possible tangible and intangible thing a man could dream of, he couldn’t feel any of it. He went on to say that the emptiness he was heavier than anything he’d ever physically lifted, which was saying an awful lot, because the man was stronger than an ox.

Ever the stoic and what seemed to be a tower of strength, and although he would indeed talk to me, it was always so hard for him to recount all the things we both knew were eating him alive. Up until “us”, he wasn’t used to having his feelings matter to the people that he needed to matter to.

In the months that followed “that moment in the window” we fought desperately to keep his head above the water, but in the end, the demons hiding inside the hole she left in his heart devoured him. In being perfectly honest, that was the day I really lost him, as from that point on he was only “dead alive”, slowly headed towards the dying light that began pulling him into the darkness.

DYING LIGHT

Here we go again, it’s coming on just like before. The same old sinking feeling pulls me down an endless hole. Oh, the heavy lifting as I fret for what might be. If this is the beginning of the end, then let me dream. In the eye of the storm from the moment we’re born. In the dying light, we learn to live when we give in to the silent waves that crash inside. In the dying light, we can begin to live again when we wake up to eternal life. Let this be an exercise in how to face your fears. Step into the realm of madness if you dare my dear. We are lost in the swarm from the moment we’re born. All that we need passes by until we concede and resign this mortal coil into the dying light. {Alter Bridge}