The Last Love Note

by Emma Grey

These people carry on as if the whole world has not been irrevocably shattered.

Once he’d swept me into his orbit, I’d barely notice we were in the sky.

It’s a lot like grief, standing here. You’re dragged from the shallows into the depths where it’s dark and heavy and you can’t see or hear or breathe. There were times over the last two years when, if I screamed, grief would swallow up the noise. It was bigger than my voice. A whirl of emotion for which there’s no sufficient word in the entirety of the English language.

“If I didn’t volunteer here six days a week, I’d spend all my time staring into the space he once took up in my life.”

“The point is, it’s your life. Your decision. Your timing. You might resist it now, but you’ll know the moment when it comes, and not before. And then you’ll realize the bigger risk is not taking a risk.”

Although, having said that, I do seem to have words about it. Many, many words. They’re all tumbling in and piling on top of one another in my astonished head as it overthinks this situation, as if it’s an Olympic event.

And now he’s sitting across from me, looking at me in a way that he never has before—not once in four years, until the airport yesterday morning. But the familiar music has stopped. The dance has faltered. And neither of us knows the new steps.

The longer I stay here, chasing the ghost of my former life, the shorter the next chapter of my life will become.

I’d trade all the riches that await us overseas for just one more minute to say a proper goodbye.

The shows go on. Grief is absorbed into its story. And it’s extraordinary.

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.