Thoughts and Processing

Posted on 20 Jan 2025 @ 2:52pm by Lieutenant Commander Raviran Dattek-Winters

948 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Shoreleave and Reassignment
Location: Starbase 375 (during the funerary proceedings)
Timeline: One Week After Arrival

Previously: Ravi felt a surge of comfort at the reassurances from the Captain and felt certain that his words and actions would also have offered support to all those here.

Continued:

The CMO's mind, by natural association, also searched out towards Lisald Vaat but she shut that off within the same moment that it appeared. It was not that she didn't feel sorrow for him and the life-changing effects this whole situation was having on him, but she was able to understand why he would have felt unable to attend this service as he had felt so much guilt about his own part in what went wrong.

It hurt Ravi to think that her dear friend was suffering so much extra grief along with the immense amount of community & 'family' grief that was happening to all the rest of the surviving crewmates. Vaat had made an horrific mistake but he shouldn't, to Ravi's mind, be feeling so totally responsible when it had taken so many other combined circumstances and events that had made it all spiral into catastrophe.

Still, there was a hope that he might eventually recover sufficiently to continue living some kind of life in the end which wasn't going to happen to those whose lives had been lost so she banished her empathy for Lisald to a place to be revisited in the future at a more appropriate time.

Within the split seconds that Ravi's mind had visited this particular shared hurt, she returned to the much more important honouring of the dead who had given their lives in service and protection of their fellow crew. She thought through all the names and faces in her memory as the mind-numbing numbers were all called and each cycled through, in a seemingly endless yet, each one every bit as painful and piercing as those who had been called before.

It was a mind-numbing number to be coming to terms with never seeing or speaking to again. Yet any numbness was painfully revived into a renewed stab with each flood of memories for the next, and the next. It was a very traumatic and wrenching experience but it did need, not only to be expressed but also to be processed in everyone's hearts and minds.

Ravi knew that her memories of some would be, by nature of her job, somewhat graphically charged with the last time she might have seen that person, or their body, but those were nothing on this day when it was time to bury those kinds of images and replace them with the memories of that person's smile, or their kindness or their bravery or even their quirks, if they might have had them. Each name needed to be transferred into a face or a kind deed or something that was a more fair representation of their memory than perhaps how they had actually died. She was deeply immersed in that processing of her own, shifting images within her head and memories within her heart.

Knowing this process would be happening for the others here too, she stopped to look around and feel empathy for those with her. This too gave her some comfort with which to overlay the trauma of such a huge amount of loss and sadness.

'Yes, everyone would need to take up the CO on his suggestion of seeing the Counsellors at the starbase.' she thought. 'Also the comfort of mutual survivors' sharing their trauma-bonding to overcome the shadow of potential survivors' guilt - SO much medical, physical and emotional damage, pain and recovery all to be dealt with! But first........'

She forced her focus out of the 'medical business' side of her brain - it was her own fault, she had invoked that to help her put up a straight face - and returned to the names as they were still being honoured, one by one, each life being so important and now so finally over
'.... forever.'

Ravi's mind was overwhelming itself so she shut down again. Back to the precious training that allowed her to put at least some of it into boxes for later. It was all too much for one day, it might take a life time to recover from losing so many friends and colleagues, but yet, that very lifetime was what these heroes had bequeathed her, and the other survivors here, to make the most of on their behalf.

Her spine stiffened as a sense of gratitude and duty of making the most of the legacy all began to effuse her and dilute some outer edges of the pain and sorrow. These fellow crew and family had gifted those who remained a future, by the giving of their own!

That, alongside the honouring of their courage and sacrifice, was itself a balm that could be clung to, in this ocean of sadness. It was something that took her breath away as it settled on her and, once finally realised, it became a piece of debris in the sea of overwhelming loss, that she was able to climb onto, in order not to drown.

She began to breathe again, this time deeply and slowly and the parade of names and faces that was passing before her mind's eyes, really did take on those smiles, those acts of kindness, but now, in a real way and not something she was desperately forcing, as she had done at first.

Sighing, Ravi finally managed to allow silent tears to fall at last, but these were tears that were mixed, both of sorrow and pain but also of gratitude and gladness, all finally mingled together.

END

 

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