The Tragic Tale of Abby Campbell, Part 1 for the October Frights Blog Hop
Leaving is hard. Being left is harder.
Leaving takes you to places where things are new or weird or different and you are distracted from the odd feeling that something is missing.
Being left leaves you exactly where you are, but there is a hole now, a blank space where someone else used to be. A silence where there was once music. A dullness where there was once perfume.
Parents feel it when children marry. Spouses feel it when wives and husbands leave for business trips or military duty. Siblings feel it when brothers and sisters leave for college. Friends feel it when other friends leave for jobs or graduate school, or just to try a new place.
All of these reasons are part of the natural flow of life. The blank space can be filled with other people, activities, phone calls, texts and emails. It isn’t the same. It is different, but it is bearable.
The most final and cruelest form of leaving is death. When death comes at a natural time, at the end of a long life, the hole is unfillable, but predictable. There is a certain rhythm that makes sense.
When the death is a child, nothing makes sense, and if the one being left is a parent, then the world twists into a position that cannot be named. The bluntness of living is tragically not numb, but exquisite and unending.
It creates madness. And the one who holds the madness is driven to find something — or someone — to fill the void.
This is where Abby Campbell exists.
READ part 2 tomorrow…
Other blog stops: http://afstewartblog.blogspot.ca/2017/09/join-october-frights-blog-hop.html
Great start with leaving and loneliness, and where Abby exists!
Thanks, Wendy! Looking forward to you following along as the story unfolds.
You gave me a whole new perspective on leaving. Shared and tweeted.
Thanks so much. I think losing a husband and a child to a tragic accident, that you are then blamed for, would break anyone.