And the rest of life crowds in once again…
I can't stop thinking about the impossibility of finding - or offering - comfort after a terrible loss. I don't know what to do with such grief, the overwhelming void of grief that remains when all the crowds of friends and supporters have gone back to their own lives. Because we're on the outside and this grief is too frightening and doesn't belong to us, and of course, we fear it.
But the impotent sadness it engenders can be quite overwhelming.
how are you doing?
It feels impossible to ask; "how are you doing?"
when I know that a fragment of something intangible
has lodged in your soul
opening an inviolable wound.
I see that you now live in a perception of what it really is
to be (or not to be) here on this heavy earth,
because that other place has slipped through
and with invisible hands
stolen the beat of your life
leaving the taste of 4am in each moment.
With a hazy forgetfulness you awake rapt
and are destroyed every single morning.
Sometimes the soft drum of remembrance fades in slowly,
sometimes it strikes like a knife on bone.
And I cannot even ask; "how are you doing?"
because I do imagine the answer and I cannot touch that pain
because it is yours alone
and too private.
What did I expect and what good does it do anyway
when all you really want is life as it once was,
with him returned.
The smell of him, the breath of him
his whole self; solid, warm
held and loved entirely.
GD February 2014
