SPACES BETWEEN US

Grief isn’t just love with a place that has nowhere to go — it’s an empty hole sitting in your chest as life continues to move on while you feel paralyzed. It’s the pieces of your childhood that you have desperately clung to being crumbled up like the receipts and papers I should’ve kept that have long since been thrown in the trash. 

It’s the numbing sensation of schedule send emails, when your employer is checking in on when you can return to work. For me, the world feels like it has ended, but for everyone else, it is just another day — back to the grind. 

It’s a song that you loved. It’s the last Pepsi that you never got to drink. It’s your old red van that I would be so excited to see. It’s the promise of Hilliard’s chocolate candy that we never got to bring to you. It’s the regrets I will always have about ignoring your calls. It’s the time I should’ve made to visit you more often. It’s the last hug that I never got. 

People love to say your loved one is “in a better place” or “no longer in pain” — but why does it feel like I am the one in the bad place now? With all of the pain larger than anyone could comprehend? 

Why is somewhere I cannot reach better than being here? Is it selfish for me to think that being here is better than where you are now? 

Why does the pain never stop but just change? Why do I have to sit and think about the memories we share, and how it will never be enough? I will have to miss you for longer than I have known you, and this process will unfold until I am the one fleeting from this earth.

I will never understand how every loss feels harder. Every day it feels harder and every day without you here feels as though the Earth should have stopped spinning. Each day that passes without you here feels impossible and cruel, you should be here to see the weather get warm and I should be coloring an easter egg for you soon. I always made yours and my dad’s the ugliest ones. I don’t know why. It was just fun to mix all the colors, and you didn’t mind anyway because you liked the color green. Or maybe it just seemed like you didn’t mind because I was making them and you didn’t want to hurt my feelings. I might still make you one, in the case by some miracle it isn’t true and you are here with us.

I wish I could ask you one more time about the games that we played on your computer in your office. I can remember so vividly what they looked like. I wish I asked when I thought about it while visiting you in the ICU. I remember driving away one evening with my mom and I asked her — but she could never have known because she isn’t you, and it’s not her fault. 

I wish I could hear you talk about the shows you loved so much — the shows I always chalked up to being “old people tv” and didn’t understand the obsession you had with monster shows and Bigfoot. I still will never understand, but now there is a bigger question: 

Why are you gone? 

It amazes me how grief truly does stack. You never know when it will hit, but when it does it’s like a bulldozer knocking down every cell that creates you. It’s a new thought that crosses your mind randomly and suddenly you’re shaking, you’re numb, you’re feeling the tears form, and you lose control all over again. It’s a gut-wrenching feeling that continues to strike me day after day. When I think I’m doing better, I see a picture, and the nerve is struck all over again and the bulldozer is back. It’s not that I necessarily want the bulldozer to leave — I think it’d be worse if it did — but I wish it was never here and I wish you had never left. 

I wish I could go back in time and show you all the photos I found today. Although you hated your picture being taken, I think you would’ve loved these photos. I would’ve loved one more photo with you, without the hospital bed. 

Although I think the sentiment is off, and the best place for you to be is with your family, I truly hope you were greeted by our family when you crossed over. I hope you are at peace being welcomed home surrounded by so many who love you, and so many people who you have missed for years. 

I hope you all will be waiting for me one day, and I can’t wait to finally tell you about my trip to Paris. 

I love you.