Quiet

It’s been quiet here for a few weeks, not because I lack the words but because I am full of them. Sometimes my grief spills into my life so loud that all I can do is listen. Allow life to slow down around the noise, and embrace my pain. Pain is scary, and grief feels a lot like fear on those sleepless nights I wish I could dream myself into another life. Sometimes I do dream she is still alive, and as I awake the raw reality of death hits me like the coffee I used to drink black but now add creamer to. I am soft in whatever spaces I can be, I search for comfort, for gentle, for slow. No longer desiring to live life like a race. No longer able to.

Grief is loud, it is violent, and her death was quiet, and unbelievable. As the loud machines slowly lulled into a hum, I wanted to set them alight, how can something that kept her alive, let her die? Yet I knelt silently by her side and held her hand as she passed, as she lulled into her last sleep.

I remember the relief of later finding out she would not have been aware of any of it, even the words of comfort, of love we spoke to her. Because if she was not aware, she was not suffering and that was the only and the greatest blessing they could have given her. To die is enough, to die without suffering should be a right.

So in the quiet of my midnights, I will ponder this, and I will ponder life. I will write my to-do list and be thankful it’s no longer a list of reasons to stay alive. For the longest time I didn’t think I would ever get to this place, I couldn’t imagine wanting to live, but now I am ready to learn to live a life with loss.