Here’s how I live in the desert

Day 3 — #writeingrief

I moved last year from Alaska to Arizona, from dense, dark, snowy winters to a baking desert heat and arid land. People inevitably joked that I’m a “woman of extremes.”

Now I’ve been ripped from a lush, gentle life before grief into the bone-searing, blinding landscape of life after the death of my father.

Terrain on fire, burning through the surface of my forced smile.

My father’s death sucked the air out of the atmosphere. I can’t breathe. Throat parched and tight as I reflexively choke back sobs that don’t actually come to the surface but hang back like a threat of devastating storms.

Curling up into a corner of imaginary shade from a hot, unforgiving pain.

Peering out on a barren wasteland of unformed memories, the ones about time spent with my father that will never happen.

To survive in the deserts of Arizona, the main thing you need is water and plenty of it.

To survive in the desert of my heart, I can try to cry. But I’m drained, dried through, empty.

This desert is vast and wide. I stumble aimlessly, keenly aware of the risks of staying here too long, yet not understanding how to live anywhere else anymore. No other place seems honest.

There is no place anywhere else in this world that can accommodate a grief this large and looming. In this desert, there is endless expanse. Here my grief spreads and fills space.

There is no room for you in this desert. You might actually fit here, but I don’t think I will see you with cruel sun in my eyes.