On loss

Loss does not feel good. It sucks out my insides and makes me feel hollow. I cried before I slept last night and woke up to more tears. That doesn’t happen every day, and I’m lucky for that. The emotion does hit me from time to time, however, like a sleeper wave. I’m learning not to turn my back on it.

Sadness washes over me sometimes, suffocating, smothering, and then it draws back, and I can see the light again. I suppose it is best simply to be conscious that, after losing someone special, that cruel sense of loss is always lurking. Anyone who has suffered grief will understand. It’s not all bad, I believe, to take hold of the emotion, embrace it, gaze at it long and hard, and then let it go, at least for a short while. It’s a choice really.

“It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”

― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent