The Lump in My Throat

In my blog entry, “Heart Broken”, I talked about having an ever-present lump in my throat and mistaking it for a sore throat.

Several times over the past month I have thought that I was getting a sore throat.  I realized one day that I was experiencing something new.  There was an ever-present lump in my throat ready to cry at any second. It is large and sometimes stuck down in the bottom of my throat, as if I have just swallowed a big, hard air bubble.  Where does that lump come from anyway?  Why can you sometimes cry with a lump in your throat or without? I have had a lump in my throat for a little over 5 weeks now.  I keep swallowing and crying but it does not seem to go anywhere.  It’s a broken heart.  It swells before it can heal.

The lump came back about 10 days ago.  It hurts to hold a lump in your throat and push the cry back down there somewhere…. where ever it goes.  I have cried it out many times, but it is just not enough.  The lump is still there. It will just rise up out of the deep and get lodged in my throat.  My broken heart is taking a long time to heal. 

My sister, Julie, just moved back to Mississippi to be near me and to help in any way she can.  On one of our first days of doing some real chatting, face to face, she was trying to open up a dialogue to discuss my future needs and determine some ways that she could be of help to me.  I was listening clearly, and then she said something about my needs, “down the road” or “future needs”.  Suddenly, the lump appeared and I was in a zone… completely zoned out and facing a harsh reality of Michael not being in my future.  I was all right talking about my present needs, but discussing where my needs would be in the future?  This meant that I would still be alone in the future.  Michael is not in my future, at least not on this earth.  The tears began to flow as I tried to picture life as a single parent.  I wanted to ask her, “He’s really not coming back, is he?”  Not that I thought he was going to walk in the door at any moment, I think it is just something psychological that causes us to have a hard time making that realistic break from the past to, “this is the way it is going to be from now on.”  I have pushed that lump down several times while typing this blog post. I have to push it down and keep it at bay much of today since I will be traveling to take Julia to her swimming state championships, which lasts four days.  Today, I must operate in full parent mode…. Outside of the box.  I have been inside the box for most of these last two weeks.  I will come out and hold that lump at bay, except when she swims her best times, of course.  When the children compete or perform, it is hard to be a single, proud parent and not remember what it was like to share that pride and joy with their loving father.  The lump needs to come outside of the box sometimes too.