The hardest goodbyes are the ones we never get to say

Grief bears down on you with the full weight of every feeling you don’t want to carry, it suffocates and overwhelms and it does so relentlessly.

When grief is unexpected it is a thunderous shock to the system that reverberates through you over and over again until it finally subsides, making space for the dull ache of missing. It shrouds you in darkness and wraps itself around you like thick air in a heavy storm. Caught out in the rain with no escape, it soaks through to the very core of you.

When the shock gives way to heartache it grows from the pit of your stomach and finds its way through every memory, a vine creeping its way through all the cracks and crevices of your heart and mind and all of the should-haves and could-haves cause a fresh prickle of tears behind tired eyes.

The agony of knowing you’ll never feel their presence, nor tell them the many words you had yet to say is a melancholy so consuming, so bitterly surreal. Losing someone leaves a scar that forever acts as a reminder of the life that was still to be lived, but now never would, and sadness and longing become familiar companions.

What is there to be done about grief, other than to wear it, other than to allow it to work through you and know that coming out the other side, whilst not unscathed, is the only way you get to live a life that they’d be proud of you for.

There is no comfort in grief, only the knowledge that there is no alternative, only the acceptance of the inevitability that we get left behind and one day we will leave behind those we love. There is no moving on, or getting over, there is only carrying on and allowing the grief to take its place in your heart — never gone, but forever changing.

There’s a lot to be said for living a life of meaning, and expressing our love at every waking moment… Reality is not black and white and the shades of grey lie in that the unexpected will always happen and we will lose someone without opportunity to say I love you, or goodbye.

I have no call to action, no reminder not to let moments slip through your fingers.

Today I have only grief to offer you, and the fullness in weight of all the feelings I don’t want to carry.