Grief.
Such a flat word.
Five miniscule letters.
But
It’s a multifaceted thing.
It’s the photos you need to keep her face fresh, but can’t bear to look at because the pain it brings rages like a flame.
Never quenched.
It’s the memory stirred unexpectedly when your mind is defenseless and wanting.
The long silence as you wait for a call from her, pick up the phone to make it
and realise you can’t.
You won’t.
Ever again.
The deep, dark hole as you come to terms with the fact that there is no one else in the world you need to speak to right now,
but her.
Grief is the bottomless hollow,
so heavy and cumbersome that it never, ever completely heals,
Or disappears.
But it does lighten.
It softens at the edges.
You learn to carry it with you
And to work one-handed, as the other silently cradles your loss.
Grief needles less as you move through life,
But it prickles.
Relentless.
Forever.
The loss is an adaptation, a new way of living.
Painful.
But survivable.
Her love is your strength and her words, your wisdom.
I’m not as strong as you.
Yes, you are.

~