#grief is weird

I wander past the funeral parlor on my way, the one where we bought your headstone. There’s always a lady smoking outside of it and I wonder if the irony is clear to me alone.

You gave up smoking your pipe years ago, before I was ever even considered or born. The love of your life didn’t like it so much, and so you traded the smoke for love’s touch.

-there’s smoke outside the funeral parlor

“there is no sanctuary for the sinner, no rest for those filled with years of misplaced guilt.”

-escape attempt #2

This week I broke down in the car.

I saw your house for the first time since and I remembered that you don’t live there anymore. That you will never live there, or anywhere, again.

As soon as the car door shut behind me, it all hit me again and I couldn’t breathe. It feels harder and harder to grasp air these days, like my lungs are always heavy, my heart too full of lost love to pump with any vigour.

It comes in waves, cruel torrents, natural disasters that strike when I think I’m okay now and that the pain is easing. Grief rushes in and fills every space, unwanted and unrelenting until there’s no room for much of anything else.

I miss you more and more, and grief will not stop creeping into every corner of my heart.

“hurt and grieve but don’t suffer alone”

“today of all days”

“there may not be meaning so find one and seize it”

“the most dangerous thing is to love”

“you will heal and you’ll rise above”

“it’s more courageous to overcome”

-achilles come down Gang of Youths