What a Shame

by Abigail Bergstrom

Because pain gets us all in the end, doesn’t it? We all must suffer eventually.

It’s the ongoing and ebbing sadness that continues afterwards that we all find a little dull.

There’s only so long those who love you can dampen their own happiness out of sensitivity for your misfortunes. Eventually they must resume their lives.

People settle down and find each other, like you and Henry. Or they don’t, and what’s left are the broken people.’

I’d move around our flat, expecting to see you in all the places I would normally find you:

The most intoxicating and damaging relationships are often those that transcend us in a frozen state of hope – we can have a small part of that person but never enough to satiate our appetite.

Perhaps your superpower was to put me in a trance so utter I sidestepped memories too painful to remember.

It seems you are woven into the fabric of me.

You, who are mistaken. You, whom we will bring an end to and burn down the trees of your former glory, ripping up the roots of your power as we rage against the bark, tear it down with bloodied hands and scald the earth where you planted your poison, which spawns and soaks into the fabric of our lives.

Sometimes it’s less painful to be inside something ugly than it is to be outside it, where you can see the full scope of its foulness.

I suppose the things we own, carry around with us, do hold emotional weight. They hold these feelings for us when we can no longer commit to holding them for ourselves.

they’re just things, things that couldn’t begin to capture the magnitude of that person and all you loved about them.’

talk. ‘Just as you said, each time death brings with it an entirely fresh bundle of grief. And working through it never gets any easier, or less painful for that matter. It does feel different each time. It’s like each bereavement adds to this hand-woven blanket.

know.’ ‘I think other people can share in parts of your grief, but it’s not possible for them to experience it exactly as you do. It is uniquely painful every time we lose someone because our grief for them is something unto itself. It’s not a replica of sadness, rather it’s a sadness designed out of how you felt about that person.’

Grief is a good thing. It means that you loved someone. It means that they mattered.

Sometimes it’s the things you say no to that define you.