without it

“the world's gone, don't think about it / 'cause life is short, we'll do without it / they say the road is long, don't think about it / 'cause life is short, we'll do without it

we can move on forward, don't worry / the best we've known is yet to come / we can move on forward, don't worry / the worst won't get the best of us

so memories are crippling / don't let the disease bring us down / there's nothing else to know, just let it go / yeah, we'll do without it somehow / though the world is gone, we'll carry on / we'll do without it / we'll do without it...” - mute math, “without it”

my mom called and confirmed (via another relative who walked through the premises) that the damage is as bad as they thought. the very front of the house is intact. from the street, it doesn't look like anything is wrong. the rest of the house is... as previously stated, gone.

i never had any hope of being able to go back, so it's not as bad as it seems. i'm not falling from as far up as i could have. so as much as it hurts, it could have been worse. more devastating. i'd like to have the luxury of stopping to mourn it all again, but i really am busy these days. i'm going to have to shuttle on and watch that (like so many other things in life) get infinitely smaller as i get farther and farther away from it.

i don't like loss. no one does, but what am i gonna do now? if i could unchar that place, i might. (i'm still not sure how glad i am that it's gone.) i'll have to do without that. mom has also soldiered on, uninterested in any further cans of open worms from me. she may never apologize or even express any regret about the past. i really wanted that acknowledgement. looks like i shall have to do without that too. all i have is what's in my hand, and that's as material as everything else that's blow away with the wind.

it's all finite. it's vanity. all of it is vanity. props to ecclesiastes. if i built my own monument and marvelled at it, i'd work hard all my life and then what happens to it when i die? it gets handed over to someone else. they may or may not take care of it. my monument may or may not survive. people may or may not remember me from the reminders that i plan to leave. God may see fit that nothing i do has any scrap of permanence to it. it's all outside of my control really. and that's my least favorite place for anything to be. and yet, i'm in His hands, at his mercy, which is the safest place to be. i'll take the latter over the former.

“the safest place in the whole wide world / is in the will of God / though trials be great / and the way seems hard / it's in the will of God / it may be on the battle front / or in the valley low / but wherever it may be / if God says, go? / go.” - karen clark sheard, “the will of God”