10/17/2022
for me, grief is floating with a current, but not in a carefree, i’ll follow the course of this river kind of way. grief for me is going through the motions without being fully anywhere, shaking into the present when something jarring happens, or someone catches me in my fog, realizes i’m saying and doing without thinking or feeling.
grief isn’t depression. depression is sinking to the bottom of the ocean, pockets lined with stones, packed there purposefully. grief is endless freefall, when you wake up and realize the world isn’t what it was yesterday, even though that’s how it always was.
grief is floating in a current because you’re so tired you can’t bother trying to find your own way.
grief is letting whoever, whatever, carry you, because you can’t carry yourself anymore.
you start to doubt the permanence of gravity, and, untethered, your body roams.
when i think of grief, i remember the way my brother’s body tensed, quaked, and cracked standing at the podium of the funeral home, trying to think of words that could hold the awe and admiration he held for my father, and the unthinkable injustice it was to be here, when he was not. i remember the haunted, empty stares of my youngest brother, the most beautiful of all of my dad’s children, and the one who tried his best to keep everyone at ease, no matter how bad things got. when pulmonary fibrosis ate the final functional alveoli remaining in my father’s lungs, my smallest brother had the wind knocked out of him, too - pallor and amber eyes reflecting back to us all felt like to live in this world without a whole family: empty.
