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 like it was yesterday. I’d rounded the corner only to find him standing there just staring over the barren field behind our property with that one 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 my mind forever. It leveled me at my core with an all too familiar adrenaline dump spilling right out the tips of my fingers that I’d come to know before in my 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 his language and understand the “words” that were being spoken on his face, in his eyes, and in his tears when he hadn’t even said a word. He went on to say that the emptiness he was feeling felt 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}