I Swear You Will Be Fine

Dear Josh,

It seems like it has been a while since I talked about grief, but if you read my posts back carefully you can actually see it in the subtexts no matter how silly the thing I’m writing about is, which is kind of metaphorical in itself.

There is a certain sadness or heaviness that follows me and I could run away from it like I seem to have been doing, or I could sit with it and attend to it, whatever that means. Will sitting with it make it go away? Probably not, but running from it just makes the eventual sitting a lot harder right? And in any case, I’m not sure I want it to go away. I wonder if there will ever be a day where I think about you and not feel this sadness, but if there isn’t and won’t, I am okay with this sadness following me around.

Last night I was sitting on my bed and texting you goodnight like I always do. For a minute, I let myself imagine that I was leaving you a long text to wake up to, like I used to do. For that minute, I imagined that you weren’t replying to me simply because you were fast asleep. I imagined that feeling of going to bed knowing that I’d wake up to multiple texts from you. For a minute there, I felt a certain lightness. I felt like a physical weight had been lifted off my chest and I could breathe again. I don’t know how to describe this feeling adequately to people who have not felt it. It was like a heavy weight – one that I didn’t know was there – was lifted off my chest. That’s the best description I can conjure right now.

For that second, I remembered what it was like to breathe lightly and realized that this whole time I had unknowingly been breathing heavily. I must have gotten used to the heaviness of grief and forgotten what it was like to live without it. These days I don’t feel grief’s looming presence as strongly anymore – or at least, that’s what I think. This moment of light breathing reminded me that I might have just gotten used to grief, not that it has reduced or gone away. But like I said, I don’t necessarily want it to go away.

I do hope though that eventually we can talk about you with nothing but joy. Might be a pipe dream, but I believe that you deserve to be spoken about with happiness, for the person you are rather than the way you left this world.

I can’t wait to see you again. Miss you more lately. I love you more, always, and forever.

Love always,
Sha