Grief
Does grief expire?
I read from someone that grief has an expiration date, but that’s just their opinion. And I respect it, but I do not subscribe to the same views.
If anyone can talk about grief from a personal POV, I think I can too.
People wear their hearts on their sleeves, on mine, I wear my grief.
For 15 years I have worn one, and that’s just the longest
Like charms on a bracelet hangs other ones
2 years, 3 years, 6 years, you count it.
What is grief apart from the initial wailing and pain?
Wait, let me show you,
Grief is
moving on, even tho you know you will never be complete.
Seeing their faces in the crowd and grasping for the hope even you know isn’t there.
Remembering their voice in your head, playing it over
and over, and over, and over again so you never forget
But you forget. Eventually.
That’s not all,
Grief is
Forgetting a feature on their face, running to check a picture because you will be damned if you forget one more thing.
Wait, no pictures?
Remembering little features on their face but never the full face,
their smile: just the jaw, the arch of their eyebrows: just the forehead, the curve of their dimple: just the cheek.
Eating, laughing, dancing — living and stopping dead in your tracks to wonder what would have been.
Grief is wearing a 16+-year-old shirt for years, never mind the holes and how flimsy time has made it, passing by a mirror and randomly realising you will never see them in it again.
Grief is seeing bits and pieces of them in people and watching your heartbreak again as those people leave, thankfully not to death.
Hearing their name and even tho it's a common name, feeling different about it on a fateful Tuesday afternoon 8 years later.
Wishing you paid more attention, listened more, looked more at, touched more — spoke more to them in those times you sat in a circle discussing irrelevant things. Just a little bit more.
Grief is catching a whiff of them, their perfume on an empty street and getting thrown back into a room with them. The same scent you have been trying to remember for 11 years.
Then you realise how much you miss them.
Grief is seeing a moment at an event, feeling your heart tighten knowing that would never be you, at least not again. And its been 12 years
Grief is itching to call them to hear their prayers but never again. And it's just over a year
Grief is remembering their sweet tiny voice when they call your name and say the Salaam, that voice not to be heard directly again. And its the third year
Grief is performing ablution during Ramadan and getting flash backs of you both drinking water as you perform ablution as kids, but that won’t happen ever again.
Realizing that is the last vivid memory you have of them. And that was almost 14 years ago
I could go on and on.
So for me, I do not think grief expires. I think it sleeps, rests, fades but never expires. And when you think it has, it rears its painful- beautiful head.
You?
