Warning: Sad Post.

Six weeks, since the universe swiped my legs out from beneath me, from beneath so many folks I know and love. Six weeks since his passing, that ripped raw, hearts and souls and lives. Six weeks, or, perhaps a little less, I told myself, to every day, expand my world. To walk on, to hold the love I have, close and tight and let it warm and fill and lead me.

I know grief. I've been witness to it for a long time. Watched it swallow people's lives, and break them. I understand grief,
I used to think. In some mundane way that it came and went like the tide. It would wash over us, bury us, and then, eventually, ebb and make its way again, out of our lives. And perhaps that is true. ..For a month. ..Or a week. ..Or a day.
Because the tide keeps coming back in. And my feet are still stuck in the sand.

I cried, I lamented, the day I learned he was gone. I tried to let it take its course, and be. To say I was, if not okay, that I was getting there. To feel that emptiness, and close my eyes in the attempt to fill that emptiness with the familiar. With memories. With Fondness. With Light. And the love in every message.

I found myself assuredly soothed, that I was progressing, that grief had found its path, in the resounding love of others who knew the same pain. I had reconnected. Gotten to know more. Become a part of something I had only drifted in the modest orbit of for so long.

But he was not there. He was not in the glow of the full-moon, or the glitter of the stars. He wasn't in the smell of the rain, or the brush of the wind. He wasn't in the gentle budding of spring. The cool grass underfoot or the warm sun on my face. He wasn't in the glisten in the dewdrops in the morning, nor the gentle radiance of the sun as it rose to wake me.
Even in the most mundane, moments, sounds in calls and chats. Someone joining a call, and my heart gave a small leap. 'Maybe that's him!' only to fall flat with the reminder that of course it wasn't.
There was only the idea of him that I put in each. A gift. A reminder. A beacon. Here I am, I see you, I am with you, I am everywhere. In every familiar shared song. In words and stories. In nostalgia and shared memories.

It is the strangest thing to say that he felt like Christmas. This promise of surprise and joy-filled gifts in every word we shared. To bring the biggest grin to my face, at even the smallest thing. Warmth, and familiarity and kinship. And now the decorations are gone, the tree is packed away, the lights are all off, and.. it's gone. It won't come back.

I hear of others opening up, sharing, falling apart, pulling back together. And I ache. I cannot. Be it.. pride, or fear, or caution. Who will I hurt, stirring up these memories. Who will find it absurd, how much it aches? Who would call me hypocrite, in my posturing words trying to sound wise of pain and loss and grief, to see me shattering again? And so it is mine to nurse and horde in silence. ...Except here, perhaps.

Even now, I feel guilty, writing this. But, I have to. The tide has been rising higher, and gods I have been struggling to deal with it. To trudge up the beach, to escape its weight. But I keep stumbling. Melancholy grips me tight, and words fail me among friends, this same pain that still courses through so many people, is in me too, and I can't bear it.
Rest assured I am not.. a danger to myself. Nothing of the sort, but, it is just.. so much.

I feel that I know grief better now. I empathize with those I have seen it break down, day by day. Those who battle it to keep going, because at last, I am there too. Wrangling this thing that is as much a part of me, as it is antithetical to me.
I still try to hold fast to the love I had, and at moments, it works. Every step forward, I know he would smile, and be proud, and urge me to keep going.

But when I look back, he's still not there. And I stumble.