The Weight of Grief

CONTENT WARNING: loss of a loved one

I knew someday that you would be someone I would have to live without. But knowing and reality have two different weights. Being without you is a weight heavier than I anticipated carrying.

I know how to hide from disappointment and despair. I know how to run from heartbreak. I learned to wield rage like a weapon, and I discovered poetry within my sadness. But grief is a suffocation that I can’t climb my way out of. Some days it feels like the light pressure of a hand on my throat. Other days, that same hand is squeezing the breath out of me.

Today, I’m struggling for air.

So much died with you. Stories that I don’t have all the details of anymore. Knowledge that no one wrote down properly. Memories you didn’t get the chance to pass down. I don’t believe there ever would have come a moment where we felt like we had said it all. I’ll always wish for one more day on that orange flower couch with you.

“He completed life,” is what I told people, as if to offer a slice of reassurance that everything was okay. That there was peace in the passing. And there is peace in knowing there is no more suffering, no more pain. But if there’s peace in the after—in the living without you—I haven’t found it yet.

A friend told me that grief is like a backpack full of rocks. You can’t help but feel how heavy it is in the beginning, and all you want to do is set it down. But with time, you become stronger, and you’re able to carry it around without it feeling too heavy. I know she’s right. I've watched her prove it to me through her own grief journey.

Grief is the price we pay for love, and lately, I’ve been paying dearly.

I’ve been asking myself a lot of uncomfortable questions lately. Is loving someone worth it if this is how it ends? How does one carry on when one knows how the story concludes? How do we cope with the knowledge that this devastation is something that will be repeated?

Some days my grief shuts me down. I become a shell that doesn’t see a point in anything at all. Other days, it wakes me up. It reminds me that life is short and love is really the only thing worth living for. It shines a light on what matters. It reminds me to not take the little things so seriously. It reminds me to smile and laugh more, to take the time to find the good in what could easily be a bad day.

Part of the heaviness I feel is knowing that I’m stuck with this grief for the rest of my life. I hate that being without you will be so much longer than living with you was. But even through all of the uncomfortable questions that keep me up at night and the days that feel pointless without you, I’ll bear that weight for you.

I’ll bear that weight for you.