Above My Head

If heaven can’t help me, can’t somebody tell me

How the same stars over my head
are the same stars from that night that you left?

Tell me, how do I exist in a world that you’re not in?

As I lay in the dark,
still looking at the same stars,
I wonder if somewhere beneath this enormous, indifferent sky,
you are looking at them too.

Maybe that is the cruelest thing about losing someone.

The world doesn’t change.

Not really.

The sky doesn’t split open.
The stars don’t fall out of their places.
The moon doesn’t stop crossing the night just because your heart has stopped understanding how to continue.

Morning still comes.

People still wake up.

Cars still pass outside the window.

Someone, somewhere, laughs without knowing that your entire universe has collapsed.

The sun still rises over a world that no longer contains the person who once made that world feel worth waking up for.

And perhaps that is what grief truly is:

Being forced to remain in a world that refuses to acknowledge what you’ve lost.

You look around and everything is still there.

The same walls.

The same streets.

The same songs.

The same coffee shop.

The same photographs.

The same seasons returning one after another as if nothing happened.

And somehow, you are expected to return with them.

To become accustomed to mornings again.

To answer when someone asks, “How are you?”

To say, “I’m okay.”

To smile when the room expects a smile.

To laugh when everybody else laughs.

To keep moving.

To keep living.

As though the person you were before that night is still somewhere inside you, waiting patiently to come back.

But they’re not.

Because some nights divide a life into two impossible halves:

Before.

And after.

Before you left.

And after you left.

Before I knew what it meant to lose someone.

And after I learned that a person can disappear from your arms while remaining everywhere inside you.

I still remember the night.

I wish I didn’t.

I wish memory were something we could put down.

Something we could close.

Something we could bury.

But memory is cruel.

It doesn’t knock.

It doesn’t ask whether you’re ready.

It arrives in the smallest things.

A certain smell.

A certain song.

A certain hour.

A certain sentence someone says without realizing it was once yours.

A shadow across a wall.

A familiar place.

A photograph you weren’t prepared to see.

And sometimes -

the stars.

God, the stars.

They haven’t changed.

That’s what destroys me.

They’re still there.

The same quiet lights scattered across the darkness.

The same ancient witnesses.

The same sky stretched above everything I have ever loved and everything I have ever lost.

And I keep wondering:

Did they see you that night?

Did they see the moment you left?

Did they watch me become someone who would spend years looking upward, hoping that somehow the distance between heaven and earth wasn’t as impossible as it seemed?

Did the stars know?

Did they understand what was happening?

Did they feel the weight of that night?

Or did they simply continue shining?

Perhaps that’s why I can’t stop looking at them.

Because somewhere inside me, there is still a desperate belief that if the stars were there when you left, then maybe they were also there when you were loved.

Maybe they remember.

Maybe they carry some piece of you that I cannot reach.

Maybe every light in that enormous darkness is proof that nothing we love ever disappears completely.

Maybe that’s what I tell myself when the night becomes too quiet.

Because I need something to believe.

I need to believe that love doesn’t simply end because a heartbeat does.

I need to believe that all the words we said to each other still exist somewhere.

That all the moments we thought were ordinary were secretly becoming memories.

That every laugh mattered.

Every embrace.

Every argument.

Every silence.

Every “I’ll see you later.”

Every moment we thought we had more time.

God, I would give anything for more time.

Not forever.

I don’t even think I need forever.

Just one more ordinary day.

One completely unremarkable day.

One morning where I could hear your voice without knowing it would become a memory.

One afternoon where I could sit beside you and not understand how precious the moment was.

One evening where I could look at you and memorize your face properly.

I wouldn’t waste it.

I wouldn’t look at the clock.

I wouldn’t worry about tomorrow.

I wouldn’t let my mind wander.

I would stay.

I would listen.

I would memorize everything.

The way you breathed.

The way you smiled.

The way you said my name.

The tiny expressions you made without realizing.

The sound of your laughter.

The silence between your words.

I would hold onto every second as if I knew what was coming.

But that’s the terrible thing about life.

We never know which moments are the last.

We say goodbye casually because we believe there will be another hello.

We walk away believing we can come back.

We put down the phone believing we’ll call tomorrow.

We fall asleep believing morning is guaranteed.

We love people as though time has signed a contract promising not to take them from us.

And then one day, there is no tomorrow with them.

There is only memory.

There is only absence.

There is only the unbearable knowledge that the last time you saw them, you didn’t know it was the last time.

I think that is one of grief’s deepest wounds:

Not only losing someone,

but realizing how many ordinary moments were secretly sacred.

How many times you were standing inside a memory without knowing it.

How many times you heard their voice and didn’t realize you would someday give anything just to hear it again.

How many times you could have stayed five minutes longer.

How many words you could have said.

How many “I love yous” you assumed there would always be another chance to speak.

If I could go back, I would say everything.

Everything I was too afraid to say.

Everything I thought was understood.

Everything I assumed could wait.

I would tell you how much you mattered.

I would tell you that you changed me.

I would tell you that there are pieces of my life that will always have your fingerprints on them.

I would tell you that even now, after everything, I carry you.

Not perfectly.

Not peacefully.

Sometimes I carry you like a wound.

Sometimes like a photograph.

Sometimes like a song.

Sometimes like a prayer.

Sometimes like a question God refuses to answer.

But I carry you.

And maybe that’s what remains when someone leaves this world.

Not their body.

Not their voice.

Not their footsteps in the hallway.

But the impossible imprint they leave behind.

The way they alter the people who loved them.

The way their existence becomes woven into another person’s memories.

The way you can never completely return to who you were before knowing them.

You became part of me.

And there is no version of my life where I can remove you without removing pieces of myself.

That’s why people don’t understand when they say,

“You have to move on.”

Move on to where?

From you?

How do I move on from someone who became part of the landscape of my soul?

How do I put distance between myself and a person who exists in everything?

You are in songs I can’t listen to.

You are in places I can’t walk past without remembering.

You are in photographs I sometimes stare at until the edges blur.

You are in sentences I almost say out loud.

You are in the instinct to reach for my phone.

You are in every story that begins with, “Do you remember when…”

You are in the quiet moments.

Especially the quiet moments.

Because silence gives memories room to speak.

And at night, when the world finally stops demanding things from me, I hear everything.

That’s when I miss you the most.

Not because the darkness makes me weak.

But because darkness removes distractions.

During the day, there are things to do.

People to answer.

Places to go.

Responsibilities.

Noise.

Life.

But night asks nothing from me.

Night simply sits beside me.

And in that stillness, there you are.

Again.

Always again.

Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine that I’m back there.

Not in the moment you left.

Before that.

Before everything changed.

I imagine a version of us that didn’t know.

Didn’t know what was coming.

Didn’t know how quickly everything could disappear.

And for a few seconds, it almost feels real.

Then I open my eyes.

And you’re gone.

Again.

That might be the cruelest part.

Grief makes you lose someone more than once.

You lose them when they leave.

Then you lose them every morning when you wake up and remember.

You lose them every time you reach for your phone.

Every time you see something they would have loved.

Every time something wonderful happens and your first thought is,

“I wish I could tell you.”

Every time something terrible happens and you realize you can’t call them.

You lose them in thousands of tiny ways.

And somehow, nobody warns you about that.

Nobody tells you that grief isn’t one enormous moment.

It’s millions of small ones.

It’s finding out that missing someone can become an ordinary part of your body.

You learn to carry it.

You learn to breathe around it.

You learn how to laugh while something inside you still aches.

You learn that healing doesn’t mean forgetting.

You learn that some wounds don’t disappear.

They simply stop bleeding every second.

And perhaps that’s what I am trying to understand.

Maybe I don’t need to stop missing you.

Maybe I don’t need to erase the ache.

Maybe I simply need to learn how to let the love exist beside the grief.

Because grief is love with nowhere obvious to go.

And I loved you.

I love you.

Perhaps that is why this hurts.

If you had meant nothing, I would not miss you.

If you had never mattered, your absence would not feel like a missing piece of the universe.

But you mattered.

You mattered so much that even the sky feels different without you beneath it.

And still -

the stars remain.

Every night, they return.

Unconcerned.

Unchanged.

Beautiful in a way that almost feels unfair.

I sometimes resent them.

How dare they shine?

How dare the universe remain beautiful when I am hurting?

How dare the moon be so bright?

How dare the night be so peaceful?

How dare the world continue turning when my world stopped?

But then I look a little longer.

And something inside me softens.

Because maybe the stars aren’t proof that the world forgot you.

Maybe they’re proof that the world remembers in ways I don’t understand.

Maybe they are reminders that darkness has never meant the absence of light.

Maybe that is what I need to learn.

That I can be broken and still be here.

That I can miss you and still smile.

That I can cry and still wake up tomorrow.

That I can carry the sadness without allowing it to become the only thing I am.

Because you wouldn’t want to become the reason I stopped seeing the beauty of everything else.

At least I don’t think you would.

I think you would want me to look up.

To see the sky.

To notice the moon.

To stand beneath those same stars and understand that they were never only witnesses to your leaving.

They were witnesses to your living.

And maybe I have been looking at them the wrong way.

Maybe I’ve spent too long asking them,

“Where did you go?”

When I should sometimes ask,

“How lucky was I to have known you?”

Maybe that’s the question grief eventually teaches us to ask.

Not:

“How could you leave me?”

But:

“How beautiful was it that you were ever here?”

And God -

you were here.

You existed.

You breathed.

You laughed.

You loved.

You had dreams.

You had fears.

You had ordinary days and extraordinary moments.

You occupied space in this world.

You touched people’s lives.

You left memories behind.

You were real.

And no ending can make that untrue.

No amount of time can erase the fact that, once upon a time, we existed under the same sky.

That matters.

It has to matter.

Because otherwise, what do we do with all this love?

What do we do with the people who leave before we’re ready?

Where do we put the words that never got said?

Where do we put the embraces that never happened?

Where do we put the future we imagined?

Where do we put all the versions of ourselves that were supposed to grow old together?

I don’t know.

Maybe we put them in the stars.

Maybe that’s why we look up.

Because the sky is large enough to hold things our hearts are not.

So I give it the questions.

I give it the memories.

I give it the nights I can’t sleep.

I give it the tears I hide during the day.

I give it the anger.

The confusion.

The gratitude.

The love.

Everything.

I stand beneath that endless sky and let myself feel it all.

Because I’m tired of pretending grief should be quiet.

I’m tired of acting as though missing someone is something embarrassing.

I’m tired of apologizing for tears that exist because love existed first.

Let me cry.

Let me remember.

Let me say your name.

Let me admit that sometimes I still don’t understand.

Let me have nights where I am okay and nights where I’m not.

Let me laugh without guilt.

Let me grieve without shame.

Let me love the life that remains without feeling like I’m betraying the life that disappeared.

Because surviving is not forgetting.

Healing is not betrayal.

Laughter is not betrayal.

Happiness is not betrayal.

Continuing is not betrayal.

I can miss you and still live.

I can love you and still find beauty again.

I can carry you without allowing the weight of losing you to crush every remaining piece of me.

And maybe that is the promise I need to make.

Not that I will stop hurting.

Not that I will forget.

Not that I will suddenly understand why.

But that I will keep carrying the love.

I will carry it into mornings.

Into sunsets.

Into conversations.

Into music.

Into every beautiful thing that reminds me that I am still here.

I will carry you when the sky is blue.

I will carry you when rain covers the windows.

I will carry you through birthdays.

Through anniversaries.

Through ordinary Tuesdays that somehow hurt more than the important days.

I will carry you through every season.

And whenever I look up at those stars, I will remember that you once stood beneath them too.

Maybe not tonight.

Maybe not tomorrow.

Maybe not in any way my hands can reach.

But once.

You were here.

And I was here.

And the stars were here.

And for some impossible stretch of time, our lives existed together beneath the same sky.

Maybe that is enough to make eternity jealous.

I don’t know what happens after this life.

I don’t know where people go.

I don’t know whether heaven has an answer for every question we carry.

I don’t know if souls can hear us when we speak to them in empty rooms.

I don’t know if you somehow know how often I still think of you.

I don’t know if you can see the nights when I look up and whisper things I could never say aloud.

But I hope you know.

I hope somehow, somewhere, you know.

I hope you know that I remember.

I hope you know that you mattered.

I hope you know that your leaving did not erase your existence.

I hope you know that there are still people who say your name.

Still people who remember your laugh.

Still pieces of you moving through the world in ways you could never have imagined.

And I hope that, wherever you are, you are finally free from every pain this world placed upon you.

I hope there is peace there.

Real peace.

The kind that doesn’t have to be earned.

The kind that doesn’t disappear.

The kind that feels like finally being able to breathe.

And if heaven really exists, I hope it is gentler than this world.

I hope it has the kind of light that doesn’t hurt your eyes.

I hope there are no goodbyes there.

No unanswered questions.

No clocks.

No endings.

And until I know what comes after this life, I will remain here beneath this one.

Here.

On this earth.

Under these stars.

Learning.

Remembering.

Breathing.

Living.

Sometimes beautifully.

Sometimes badly.

Sometimes with tears.

Sometimes with laughter.

But living.

Because perhaps the greatest way I can honor the life you had is to refuse to let your absence convince me that life itself has no beauty left.

There is beauty here.

There has to be.

I have seen it.

I’ve seen it in sunsets.

In kindness from strangers.

In someone’s hand reaching for mine.

In old photographs.

In music.

In laughter that arrives unexpectedly after days of sadness.

In the way morning light enters a room.

In the smell of rain.

In the quiet after a storm.

In the first star appearing at dusk.

In the fact that somehow, impossibly, a heart can break and still keep beating.

Maybe that’s the miracle.

Maybe that’s what the stars have been trying to tell me all along.

That the darkness does not get the final word.

That loss does not erase love.

That an ending does not make a life meaningless.

That even when someone leaves, what they gave us can remain.

And perhaps one day, when enough time has passed, I will look at these stars without only remembering the night you left.

Maybe I’ll remember everything that came before it.

Maybe I’ll remember the laughter.

The ordinary afternoons.

The conversations.

The little moments I once thought didn’t matter.

Maybe I will stop measuring your existence by its ending.

Maybe I will measure it by the love that existed while you were here.

That is what I want to remember.

Not only the final night.

Not only the empty space.

Not only the unbearable silence afterward.

But you.

All of you.

The living you.

The laughing you.

The imperfect you.

The human you.

The person who existed beyond the tragedy of their leaving.

Because you were more than the way you left.

You were a whole universe before that moment.

And I don’t want grief to reduce you to one night.

So tonight, I look at the stars differently.

I still hurt.

I still miss you.

Some part of me probably always will.

But I look up and let myself breathe.

The stars are still there.

And somehow, so am I.

Maybe that is not the ending I wanted.

Maybe it is not the answer I prayed for.

But it is something.

A beginning, perhaps.

A tiny, trembling beginning.

The realization that I can stand beneath the same sky where everything changed and still find a reason to keep looking upward.

Not because I have forgotten you.

Because I haven’t.

Not because it doesn’t hurt.

It does.

But because love deserves somewhere to go.

And maybe I can let it become something other than pain.

Maybe I can let it become gratitude.

Maybe I can let it become kindness.

Maybe I can let it become the way I love people while they are still here.

Maybe I can stop assuming there will always be another day.

Maybe I can say the words.

Stay a little longer.

I love you.

I’m proud of you.

I’m grateful you’re here.

Maybe I can hold people a little tighter.

Listen a little longer.

Forgive a little sooner.

Notice the ordinary moments.

Because now I know.

The ordinary moments are not ordinary.

They are the whole thing.

Life is made of tiny moments we don’t realize we are going to miss.

A cup of coffee.

A late-night conversation.

A familiar voice.

A hand on your shoulder.

Someone calling your name from another room.

A song playing while you drive.

A laugh that makes you laugh too.

A person sitting beside you in silence.

These are the things we think will last forever.

And then suddenly, they become the things we would give anything to experience once more.

So I will not waste every remaining moment being afraid of the next loss.

I cannot.

Because then I would lose the life that remains while grieving the life that is gone.

And you deserve more than that.

Your memory deserves more than that.

I deserve more than that.

So I will keep looking at the stars.

I will keep letting them remind me.

You were here.

You were loved.

You mattered.

You still matter.

And although I cannot bring you back, I can carry forward what you left in me.

The love.

The memories.

The lessons.

The softness.

The strength.

The pieces of you that somehow became pieces of me.

Maybe that is how people become immortal.

Not through statues.

Not through names carved into stone.

But through the people they touched.

Through the stories told about them.

Through the kindness they inspired.

Through the memories that survive long after their footsteps disappear.

Maybe every person we love leaves a small light inside us.

And maybe when we die, we don’t take all our light with us.

Maybe some of it stays.

Maybe that’s what the stars are.

Maybe they’re all the pieces of everyone we’ve ever loved, scattered across the darkness, reminding us that nothing beautiful disappears completely.

I don’t know.

But tonight, I want to believe it.

Tonight, I need to.

Because I am tired of asking heaven for explanations.

I am tired of asking the stars why.

Some questions may never have answers.

Some losses will never make sense.

Some goodbyes will always feel too soon.

And maybe peace does not come from understanding why someone left.

Maybe peace comes from accepting that they were here.

That they loved.

That they were loved.

That their life happened.

That our lives touched.

And that no ending can undo that.

So if you can somehow hear me -

wherever you are -

I hope you know this:

I remember you.

I will remember you.

Not every day in the same way.

Not always with tears.

Sometimes I will remember you and smile.

Sometimes I will laugh at something that reminds me of you.

Sometimes I’ll hear a song and feel that familiar ache.

Sometimes I’ll look at the sky and feel nothing but gratitude.

And sometimes, yes, I will still break.

But I will let myself.

Because I loved you.

And there is no shame in loving someone so deeply that their absence leaves an echo.

There is no shame in missing you.

There is no shame in saying that I still wish you were here.

There is no shame in admitting that some nights I still don’t know what to do with the fact that you’re not.

I don’t have to pretend.

I don’t have to make the grief beautiful every second.

Sometimes it is ugly.

Sometimes it is anger.

Sometimes it is exhaustion.

Sometimes it is silence.

Sometimes it is screaming into a pillow because the world is too quiet.

Sometimes it is staring at the ceiling at three in the morning, asking questions that have nowhere to go.

Sometimes it is seeing someone who looks like you from a distance and feeling my heart stop before my mind catches up.

Sometimes it is reaching for the phone.

Sometimes it is forgetting for half a second.

And then remembering.

Again.

Again.

Again.

But eventually, perhaps, the remembering will hurt less.

Not because you mattered less.

But because I will have learned how to carry the love without carrying only the pain.

And maybe that is what healing really means.

Not becoming the person I was before you left.

That person is gone.

I am changed.

But perhaps I can become someone new.

Someone who knows that time is fragile.

Someone who doesn’t postpone love.

Someone who says what needs to be said.

Someone who understands that every ordinary moment can become sacred without warning.

Someone who looks at the stars and doesn’t only see the night you left.

Someone who sees the whole sky.

The whole story.

The whole beautiful, unbearable truth:

You were here.

And I was lucky enough to know you.

That has to count for something.

It has to.

Because even though I would trade almost anything for another day with you, I would never trade the days I had.

I would never trade knowing you.

Never trade the laughter.

Never trade the memories.

Never trade the love.

Even knowing the ending.

Even knowing how much it would hurt.

I would still choose you.

I would still choose every moment.

Because some people are worth the grief their absence creates.

Some loves are worth the heartbreak.

Some memories are worth carrying for a lifetime.

And you—

you are one of mine.

So tonight, I lie beneath the same stars.

The same stars that watched the world change.

The same stars that watched you leave.

The same stars that have watched me struggle to understand how the earth could keep turning without you.

And I finally understand something.

The stars were never promising that nothing would change.

They were only shining.

Quietly.

Patiently.

Reminding me that even in the darkest places, there can still be light.

Not enough to erase the darkness.

Not enough to bring you back.

But enough to see the next step.

Enough to breathe.

Enough to remember.

Enough to keep going.

So I will.

Not because I am no longer sad.

Not because I’ve found all the answers.

Not because I’ve forgotten.

I will keep going because there are still stars above me.

There are still mornings I haven’t seen.

There are still songs I haven’t heard.

There are still people I haven’t met.

There are still sunsets waiting.

There is still kindness I haven’t received.

There is still kindness I haven’t given.

There are still chapters I haven’t read.

And perhaps, somewhere among all those unwritten moments, there is a life I haven’t learned to love yet.

I will find it.

Slowly.

Messily.

With your memory beside me.

I will find it.

And when I look up at the stars, I won’t ask them to bring you back.

I won’t ask them why they let you go.

I won’t ask heaven for an explanation.

I’ll simply whisper:

Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for existing.

Thank you for touching my life.

Thank you for leaving pieces of yourself behind.

Thank you for every moment I didn’t know would become precious.

Thank you for every memory that still makes me feel something.

Thank you for teaching me that love can survive even when the person we love cannot.

And if there really is somewhere beyond this world where the people we lose can hear us -

then hear me now.

You are not forgotten.

You are not reduced to the night you left.

You are not only an absence.

You are a memory.

A heartbeat in the history of my life.

A name that still means something.

A light I still recognize.

And when the night becomes quiet, when the world goes dark and the stars appear one by one, I will remember.

I will look up.

And for a moment, I will imagine that the same sky is holding us both.

Not together in the way I once wished.

Not close enough for me to reach.

But connected by something older than distance.

Love.

That stubborn, impossible thing.

The thing that remains when everything else is gone.

So here I am.

Still beneath the stars.

Still asking questions.

Still carrying grief.

Still carrying love.

Still learning how to exist in a world you’re not in.

And maybe I will never become completely accustomed to it.

Maybe some part of me will always look for you.

Maybe that’s okay.

Maybe love was never supposed to be something we get over.

Maybe it is something we learn to live alongside.

Maybe the goal was never to forget the person who left.

Maybe the goal is to remember them without forgetting ourselves.

And so I will remember you.

But I will also remember me.

The person who survived the night.

The person who cried.

The person who broke.

The person who somehow woke up again.

The person who kept breathing.

The person who learned that a heart can break and still hold love.

The person who discovered that grief can be enormous without being the entirety of a life.

I am still here.

And perhaps that matters too.

Perhaps somewhere, beneath all the sorrow, there is a quiet kind of courage in that.

Not the loud kind.

Not the kind that pretends everything is fine.

Just the simple courage of waking up.

Of opening the curtains.

Of drinking the coffee.

Of answering the phone.

Of stepping outside.

Of looking at the sky.

Of saying your name.

Of loving again.

Of living.

One day at a time.

One breath at a time.

One star at a time.

And tonight, that’s enough.

Tonight, I don’t need to understand everything.

I don’t need heaven to explain itself.

I don’t need the stars to answer.

I only need to look upward and remember:

The same stars that watched you leave

are still shining.

And somehow,

after everything,

so am I.