Trigger Warning: Grief and Loss…

It never gets easier, just different. Do I still feel the air choked off when I think of you? Yeah. Does it still feel like you’re sitting on my chest? Yeah, and I wish it didn’t, and I hold it dear because the movies of our life have lost most of the sound. The film still rings true, major imprints that are still crystal clear visuals. Still crystal clear emotions, pressing against every fiber of my being. What could possibly be any different?

The moments, now, are moments of what could have/should have been. I fall down a rabbit hole in my mind of how you would react, or what you would think. How I would pick up my phone to give you the latest update or to plan a sibling date to catch up. How you would give me your honest opinion and, while gentle, could, and would, be brutally honest. I think back to smoking camels on the patio, while you would update me on the latest going on in your life, ask me my own experience with something similar or just listen.

I will never get to tell you about how I am, finally, at peace. How I have never felt so fully me and am not pullling punches on being myself. How you won’t call me to remind me to be kinder to mom or give me her perceptvie on something we disagree on, you were our translator. We have had to learn how to be our own, and while rocky a lot it has been good for us. I also don’t have to mediate between you and mom when you are trying to get her goat. We won’t get to have family dinners at my place and have you felt to the carpet in a puddle because you ate too much, again lol.

So many of your mannerisms still play in the movie theater in my mind. I don’t sit and often take in a full set, because it never stops hurting, it’s just different. I fear if I sit too long, it will pull me under, so I take out those moments and live in the silent picture of our lives. It is just…different.