The tales of Grief : a memoir

The melancholy you get staring at the sunset listening to blues after a disappointment, the feeling in your chest, the one that leaves you near-wheezing, akin to the perceived stillness of the sky when the last traces of the sun departs, that is how the calmest pangs of grief hit. Now, imagine the fiercest, I dare you.

You see the thing about loss, is how nothing ever prepares you for it, sometimes it's sudden, and other times one is aware of the imminent loss, but nothing ever truly prepares you for it, nothing calms your mind enough to now wrench in absolute agony when it happens.  It may come as a still, sometimes with the gravity of an awakened wave,  But one thing consistent about grief is the hollow it digs into your heart, like the clouds over the sea after a rainfall, it lingers, like the smell of smoke after a fire, it tails you, it persists.

You see, grief never gets easier, even if it happens multiple times, you never do get accustomed to someone you love departing forever, never do get used to seeing corpses, or acknowledging loss. The first time is Hard enough, it instills a nerve wracking fear in you, one that is so sharp it cuts through your Vortex veins,  It awakens you to reality, to the fickleness of life, Reminds you of the instability of situations. In the coming days after the loss, a panic washes over you, anxiety over the possibility of the repeat of this to another one you love, you take precautions, hope that all your attentiveness will somehow provide evasion in light of the eventuality. The next time it happens, it is even crueler, this time it dawns on you, shocks you that all the preparations still could not prevent it from happening, it rips your heart open, bleeds your heart dry. 

With grief, it's two losses, One for the person you have lost and the other for the loss of the person you were, because with each loss, a part of you created for them dies too. How do you navigate time with one less person to navigate time with, they stay stuck in the past as time progresses for you, the wish for time to still only makes it move faster, 4 seasons, 8 more, and soon you realize you have spent years without them, you have celebrated their birthdays by yourself grasping desperately unto whatever permanent reminder you can have of them, hoping that somehow they were with you as you sang them a song.

Grief is cruel, very wicked, so much that it connives with time to taunt you, to remind you on how little power you have over life.

the connoisseur