I Will Help You Remember

Because I’m grieving, too

I know you still grieve. I know you still stand at their grave and want to lay down on the ground and melt into it, just to feel a grain of their substance still there to touch you — wrap itself around you and help you keep going for another day.

If only they were here for one moment more, you could hold their face in your hands, kiss their baby-soft skin, and smell the sweet scent of their hair.

You could pull them into your chest, trying to fill the hole where your heart once was, and breathe into them every word you’ve wanted to say since they’ve gone.

But I know how you have to walk away and go home with your empty arms and aching chest. You walk through your halls with the echoes of your unanswered questions.

I want you to know… I will never tell you to get over it. No one looks at someone who has lost their leg, or their arm, or their sight and tells them to get over it. If they do, they’re an asshole.

They know that person will never be the same — had to learn to survive in a whole new way — without that part of them, because they can’t ever get it back. Not here.

Your heart was ripped right from your chest, and there is a cord that still connects you. It pulls you, and you want to follow it. You want to go where it leads.

If you need someone to listen to you and help you remember why you should stay, I’ll listen. I’ll help you remember.

Because I know. I’m grieving, too.