No Happy Endings

by Nora McInerny Purmort

This is what life looks like when you water the seeds of joy with guilt and shame. It feels as good as it sounds.

I couldn’t talk about my happiness without touching the uncomfortable truth that everything I have now is built on everything I lost.

Life is flexible and has long legs and a million different ways to kick you right in the chops. We lose the ones we love, but we also lose friends, jobs, and our sense of self. And then, we get to assemble something new from whatever is left behind.

My new life was me, and Ralph, and whatever we chose to make from the rubble of the life we had with Aaron. I could have sifted through the wreckage and tried to make a reasonable recreation of what we had, but it would have been obviously broken, obviously wrong. I didn’t want a knockoff of my old life with just one less family member.

I wasn’t a normal person. I was a person who had seen beyond the veil, who had watched a young and vibrant person fade into what comes next. I didn’t know what I was supposed to make of this new life,

“You tell her this: don’t should yourself. And don’t let anyone should on you, either.”