It’s been a year since I touched grief, a year before I saw his face again in my dream but what did I do instead? I ran…
A year has passed since she last heard the news of his passing and had to console her mother on the phone midday from a different continent. How it felt like she could almost feel the thread of her mother’s mind unravelling. For a moment, she really thought she was going to lose her to insanity. It was weird really because she knew this functional numbness she was feeling was not going to help her escape this grief but she couldn’t quite get to it amidst the chaos that was unfolding around.
It is not like she didn’t see this coming, I mean he was in a coma but I guess somewhere at the back of her mind she’d hoped that he’d wake up again, that “all will be well.” The mantra she often chants when life gets tough.
This time, using that phrase meant she had to figure out a way to move on with his passing, to carry on with the loss of a person that she never quite had to question their place in her life because they were always present until now that she has to fill the void of their absence. Now, all did not get well in the way she expected. This is not the meaning of the all will be well she wanted.
It was usually the little things that made the feeling of loss pronounced, the things they alone could handle while they were alive, the sound of their voice, the way they uttered words of encouragement, resolved conflicts, and said their prayers, in a way only they could.
A year has passed since… she remembers that in the first week of his loss, she kept thinking he’d show up in her dream to assure her that all was well, although, she wasn’t sure how she even felt about that. You know how people talked about ghost and paranormal activities…
Now, a year later he finally shows up, he was looking good, yeah, better than what she had imagined, better than she even knew of his appearance while he was alive, he looked radiant, nourished, splendid, and he had an easiness and smile about him that made her wonder how pleasant the other side must be. He actually looked well rested if that makes any sense. He beckoned to her, I think he had something to say, but she ran.
She ran because she thought to herself what that could mean, if that meant that she was now closer to the pearly gates than before. She wakes up thinking why did I run? Then, she finds herself wondering what he was about to say, he didn’t even seem mean or anything, so, it was truly a wonder that she ran despite her yearning.
She doesn’t know if she should share this with others in the family because it seems that his name have become hushed into a silent place, this painful memory of remember silently but do not say out loud and for some reason, that felt even more isolating to her, why did nobody mention his name? why did they make it seem like he never existed on this plane?
Even as she asks all these questions in the recess of her mind, she understands that everyone grieves differently and she respects that, but it doesn’t stop her from thinking what would happen if she decided to say out loud, all her memoirs with grief in the last year.
Till now she hasn’t found the answer to her question, “where are you?” She knows now that the skin would have faded away and the bone may yet not remain, she knows the mark of the grave, she crafted the epitaph engraved on the stone but she still asks because she wonders where the you he was, is…. The him that made him alive in the smiles, the words, and the memory.
The thing about grief is how randomly it hits you. You finally think you have moved on but when that wave comes, you may finally be forced to think there is no getting over this, there is only different moments from here to there that exist with the void the loss has produced.
As she stares without gaze into the weird autumn day, a hot tea in hand, a cozy blanket wrapped around, she takes stock of all the things she grieves, the loss that just keeps expanding. She remembers love that has gone never to return, dreams that ended midway, loss of an identity that she once felt complete within. She thinks to herself “how do you grief a thing you cannot name?”
It is funny that she wonders at the inevitability, that the more she acquires, the more she stands to lose, that as she lives, it is likely that grief will add to grief. There is no moving on from this she knows, there is only living with this, whatever this is, the grief she can name and the elusive ones, the ones she cannot even bring herself to name because she doesn’t even know if she wants to look through the void.
In the end, grieving helps you remember that there is a timeline on everything, every memory, every event, every smile and every tears, this is why you must appreciate the little things, the big things, the spaces in between where you want to be and where you are. In the midst of shattered dreams and new hope.
The void that grieving brings is a constant reminder that she yet lives. Maybe truly there will come a time when even this shall end and they will be no more tears.
This is where this curtain close.
Xoxo,
Dcconossieur.
Connoisseur of Memories 