Grief

Part One

I miss you today. I miss you every day. Some days it just hurts less, or I should say, the hurt isn’t at the forefront. Some days. Other days, like today, I’m reduced to a sniveling mess, making a futile attempt to console myself with hot chocolate and Christmas cookies I found in the freezer. It is a shitty Band-Aid at best that will only result in my feeling worse about everything.

It creeps up on you after a time. When you first lose someone, that pain is ever present, like a new friend or lover, and gradually becomes so part of your everyday it’s almost like a white noise, until something small sets it off. Today, I was just chatting with a friend and all of a sudden there you were in my Facebook news feed, messing about and being silly, and it was so beautiful to hear your voice that I smiled before the onslaught of tears. But still I’ve watched the video on loop because it is you, in the weeks before you were no longer laughing and around me, and I treasure it despite the pain it brings. I consider myself lucky to feel it, really, because it means I was lucky enough to know and love you.

This pain never goes away. I can’t even say if it gets lessened with time. Time does not heal all wounds. Love is stronger than time and therefore pain is, as well. When you lose someone you love...I don’t think it gets better. Sure, it gets easier, daily activities that were once impossible to do now can be done, but it never gets better. It’s been a year and a half maybe, and every time I suddenly burst into tears, I wonder if you’re watching and shaking your head at me. I know you were ready—excited even—to go, but that doesn’t make me feel better. I feel guilty wondering if maybe you’d have fought harder if I’d been with you in those last few years, given you a reason to keep going, to keep trying things. By the time I got there you’d given up and were ready, and I was lucky to just be allowed to see you again to say goodbye. I remember the phone call on the bus, being surprised to hear you, being so caught up in my own life that I wanted you to call me back later, only to hear you say, “This is it, I’m going to die soon. Don’t come visit, I don’t want you to see me like this.” But we are cut from the same cloth and maybe being sick made your resolve weaker because there I was, with you, in your final weeks. I treasure that and am grateful that I got even that brief period of time—and small moments alone—with you before the end.

I miss hearing your voice on the other end of the line telling me you love me. I miss getting hugs in the morning and hugs before bed. Your last letter to me is tacked above my laptop so every day I see the words, “I would have given the world to see you again.” I would. I would give the world to see you again. The world is less bright, less kind, less funny without you in it. You not being here is what is wrong with the world. What is wrong with my world.

Part Two

I slept every night for two and a half years with your painting of a beach over my head. I saw it every day, multiple times per day. It made me happy—my little mental happy place. I still keep the letter you wrote above my desk to glace at it and see your handwriting. All of this and I am filled with comfort from you, almost a ghost of a hug. The other day I was sorting through a shelf of things—books, documents, various folders—and came across the Queensland train schedule that you’d picked up for me on my visit. It broke me. Such a simple document with no sentimental value had reduced me once more to that puddle of a person curled on the floor, soaked in her own tears.

No, grief does not lessen over time. Grief is like the ocean, some days calm and bright where one could swim peacefully, and others it is rough and choppy, threatening to drag one down to its very depths and drown them. The days creep nearer and nearer to the third anniversary of your death and I find myself casting about for a life jacket, so to speak. I was never a strong swimmer.