Sadness- When grief comes to visit

 It was still dark outside on Saturday morning when I got up, I decided to get myself a cup of coffee and sit in the stillness. The moment I sat down I was draped in a blanket of sadness. I could actually feel the weight of the emotion. The feeling had a pulse to it and with each beat my heart began to physically ache.
This is not my usual state of being. I am happy everyday, not all day everyday but a portion of each day. My default is to look at the upside. Sure, the washer broke down but thankfully we had the dough to pay for repairs. I've been called perky more times than I can count, usually be some anonymous person on the other side of a 'how can we help you'? call. Sorrow of this magnitude shakes me to my core. It is so difficult for me to understand.
My  mom once explained grief to me this way, it is like the ocean, waves come at you and then the tide goes out and you are on a sandbar of peace. A rest before the tide surges again.
I remember my first real heartbreak. My high school boyfriend broke up with me on Easter. I took to the couch with a vengeance. I sobbed, I wept, I was teary, by July I was up and out in the world again. In my innocence I thought this was how all loss and pain would be felt for my entire life. The shock followed by some down time and then I would  be over it. I had no knowledge that as I grew there would be degrees of death, not all of it literal. I believed that acceptance would alleviate my need to grieve.
I've written before about the day Bill and I received Sophie's diagnosis, the way my heart burst into a thousand tiny pieces. I then accepted and got into action. Easy. Done. Move on.
Except life isn't the same as when I was a 17 year old heart sick girl. I am not the same.
I think I fight the grief because to me it means I am not in acceptance of what is. 
My coffee grew cold and bitter as I sat, soon Bill and the girls got up, we all had some breakfast and got ready to go to the beach. As we drove to the beach I looked at Bill and with tears streaming down my face said, I can't. he reached out and held my hand. This shroud of despair hung over me as we walked to the waters edge. I felt like pitiful looking cartoon character with a dark rainy cloud over my head, sure that it was visible to all. As I felt the sun warm my skin and  looked out at the blue waves I began to cry again, it felt as if a small balled up fist was clutching at my heart.
Why this degree of hurting? Why this day? I love Sophie and she is just perfectly who she is supposed to be. She has a happy life and brings me a joy unequalled to anyone else.
It's grief. I still grieve over the child I had imagined she would be. I feel a loss over what never was with her. Sports teams she never played on. Friendships she did not make. Independence on a different scale. These are the things we are not allowed to speak of or think. Once I accept her as is, all of those 'typical' wants should be released and I should embrace all that she is, celebrate her triumphs. I do honor how much she has changed and how much more self-reliant she is. Yet this broken heartedness still rears its pain filled embrace. When this happens I try to evaluate every aspect of it, I feel like a lousy mom and all around bad human. I understand the mourning of someone who is no longer physically with us but this anguish over a possibility  is incomprehensible to me. I remind myself that it has only been four years since Sophie's diagnosis even though I knew things were different for much longer. Is four years enough time to fully digest this? Does it take a lifetime to allow the truth to be fully acknowledged?