Grief

Grieving is a strange process. Till very recently, I wasn't able to write anything about Ralph because I just didn't have the words. Everything was images and a big ball of memories and emotions that just wouldn't fit into letters and numbers, no matter how hard I tried.

Grief is funny. Some days I am fine and I feel nothing. I am able to go about my day, immune to Ralph's absence, thinking about him without heaviness of feeling. Accepting and living. Other days my mental space is full of Ralph, flooded with memories and ache and loss, and the etetnal ball in my stomach feels sore and raw, leaking tears and longing. There is no warning, no preparation for which times come when. I have to accept that I don't know when I will be 'over it'. When missing my baby will take over from missing my baby. Words fall short.

There is no cure for a hole in your heart and a hole in your life. No matter how many tears I cry, thoughts I conjure and words I say or write, our Ralph is dead. Nothing can bring him back.

All this has got me thinking about how some experiences bind us. Love is one of them. Death is another. I have found that grief is a leveller. Most people have felt it. Most people understand. Most people know what it feels like to have no solution to the black hole and all the things in your life that remind you of it, all the things you just have to learn to live with, until the cup fills up again and time rolls forward.

You grieve in proportion to the degree that you love. And nothing in the world could have made me love Ralph any less. Until a few weeks ago I don't think I had lost someone so close to me. I have lost all my grandparents but I regret to say that I was not that close to them. Not in this way. They were not part of my life like Ralph was. He was part of everything and in everything. Adjusting to life without him feels like starting again.

And I understand grief in a way that I hadn't before now.