A Dose Of Finality

It really wasn't that long ago that I shared my thoughts on life & death, how I was almost pre-grieving people in my life.

It was really only a few weeks before he passed that I had written it.

The pre-grieving was something that would show up for me on occasion and I'm not really sure why. I'm not sure why I thought it was necessary or maybe that wasn't it at all…maybe my body or my soul knew something that I didn't. Maybe it was trying to prepare me for what could or would come.

Did it work?

It doesn't feel like it worked.

Nothing could or can prepare you.

For loss, for sudden loss, for death,  or for the finality of it.

Your mind cannot wrap around the idea.

Even now, I can't fully take it in.

I knew when it first happened that I was only beginning to become aware of the moments that I would miss him. I knew it was going to hit me in times and places that I least expected it.

Right now it feels like it's everywhere and all the time.

Easter, birthdays, any kind of celebration, or any regular fucking Wednesday -- not because I would have been with him, but because I would have known what he was doing, or what he had been doing.

I can feel him around me, I can hear his voice, and I see the signs - just like I knew I would…and sometimes it's enough, sometimes I can find peace in it. Other times, I feel so empty in the knowing that I can't have just one more conversation, or hear his voice one more time.

Then I simultaneously panic about how I might one day forget what his voice sounded like. I can hear it clearly now in my head, and that is where I need it to stay. And even though I can listen to voicemails, I want that access, I want to remember.

I never realized that I would become afraid of forgetting. I never knew that was part of grief.

I never knew the millions of things that were part of grief.

How can these emotions be so big, so contrasting?

I don't dare try to hold them or sit with them, because the empty feeling of regret or despair would completely collapse me if I lingered there for more than a few seconds.

In those moments, I hear a phrase that used to drive me nuts "don't tell me how you can't, tell me how you can". And the only thing I can do, the only thing I have control over in those moments is the breath.

I have to breathe through it.

It is, or feels like, the only thing that I really have to move through this.

Because the truth is, there is nothing that I or anyone can do. Nothing. Nothing to say, nothing to do.

This is another first.

I am used to being able to do something to change a mood, or a circumstance…but grief is always there waiting for me now. No matter what I have done, moved, thought, written, no matter who I have talked to, what I've talked about…none of it changes the reality that he is gone.

Gone from here yet I see signs of him everywhere.

Gone and yet I still hear his guidance in my mind.

Here and gone.

Within me and gone.

The contrast of that is mind bending.

I do not try to hold the contrast, I can only observe it. I do not try to figure any of it out, I can only observe it.

I know I am in this for the long haul. These days, the emotions, the contrasting feels - it will continue, for the rest of my life.

And I honestly want it to. I am alive to feel the pain of great grief that comes with great love, and I wouldn't want to give that up.

With time, I will learn to carry this with a bit more composure and wisdom -- I know that too.

But right now, all I can do is breathe and remember that the only way through, is through.