Deferred Pain  I caught myself doing it this time, deferring the pain.  Perhaps I do it all the time and just didn't realize it before.     When Lyddie died, I kept searching myself for the signals of grief, and found just coldness.  There was some sadness, yes, and some regrets, but nothing like what I expected.  I felt so guilty not being, well, grievous.     She and I weren't close.  Dunno if we ever were.  I didn't see that much of her until I went to live with my dad, by which time she was in elementary school.  I lived there for a few years and then went on my way, off to college, then the Army, then starting a family of my own, and we just grew farther apart.  The same is true of her older, full-blood sister, Lea Ann.  We just don't, never had, that much in common.  I never really understood them.     Oh for the benefit of refreshing the memory, Lyddie is my sister Lydia, who was shot and killed at school in Mississippi October 1st.     So, anyway, today as I departed the delightful bubble of spacetime that surrounds my lover for an extended absence, I realized I was doing it, what I thought I didn't do.  I was thinking of other things, stuff that needed to get done, issues in my marriage, my younger child Boober's recent vomiting episode, anything and everything but the fact that I will be out of touch with my beloved for far, far too long.  And knowing that, knowing that, I started to feel the pain, and I shamefully bolted anyway, into the mundane details of my life.     Ok, so even if I didn't do the right thing, it still makes me wonder if I am deferring from the shooting.  I mean, I did get sad and cry at the funeral, and I did go flaky for a while after I got back, but I still don't feel a lot of pain or sadness.  For instance, a friend recently offered me sympathy over how difficult the holidays are going to be, going home for a couple of weeks.  I don't really think it will be that much different.  I didn't hear from her over the holidays when she was alive.  It sounds so cold, but it's hard to miss what you didn't have, and I didn't have her.  Do I really miss her and am just denying it?  I don't know.  Maybe these holidays will be hard.