Grief

Grief is such a bizarre feeling.

Aside from the sheer pain, it leaves you confused more often than not.

You wonder how seemingly everyone you know can feel so good while you feel so bad.

Eventually it dawns on you that time has stopped for you but keeps moving for everyone else and that your world ended while theirs kept going.

You don’t want to be a burden, but you do want somebody to notice you feel bad.

Sometimes you want someone to make it all better.

Other times you want to be left alone.

You walk around in a daze, as if you’re halfway between asleep and awake, alive and dead.

Everything seems lackluster compared to how it was before, even your favorite things.

You end up trying everything that you think will take away even a small amount of the pain.

It seems like you’ll never feel good for more than a few seconds ever again.

You may even want to feel bad, as if feeling good would be a betrayal to the one you lost.

You might not want to die but sometimes you hope you don’t wake up in the morning.

Sleep becomes an oasis in which the pain is manageable, and perhaps even absent for a little while.

Sometimes you get to see your loved one in a dream, although that never happens as often as you want.

Then, against all odds, you find something that helps, and you cling to it with all you’ve got left.

Things gradually begin getting lighter.

One day, you realize how far you’ve come and how much better you feel.

Looking back on old memories from when the grief was still fresh, you’re amazed at the difference between then and now.

That gives you hope, and hope can work wonders in even the darkest times.

–For my dog Sawyer