The Last Love Note

by Emma Grey

That’s the problem with grief. It’s not packed tidily in a box that you can bring out in appropriate, private moments and sort through. It’s threaded inconveniently through everything.

Infinitesimal.

An impossible-to-grasp, endless absence not just from you, but from the entire world. You won’t run into them by accident in the supermarket. You can’t stalk them on social media. Your best friend won’t furnish you with gossip about their next steps. There’s just nothing. Forever.

There were times over the last two years when, if I screamed, grief would swallow up the noise. It was bigger than my voice.

Sometimes I flirt with death. It’s just a fleeting glance. A blip, somewhere on the outer edge of my radar. A faint, comforting reminder it’s always there in case I need it.

beguiling.”

Don’t stop living, just because I do.

infinitesimal

cacophony

pyrolytic

This is not a fork in the road, I realize. It’s just the road. There’s no Story A and Story B. There’s one, imperfect, meandering direction.

wanted to write about grief, but it’s landing on the page as so much more than that. Maybe because, even in loss, there’s so much more to life.