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finding someone you can laugh with when everything hurts—was the stuff happily ever afters were made of.
Grief is a grind. It is the work of breathing and waking and rising and moving through a world that feels emptier. A gaping hole has been torn into your existence, and everyone around you just walks right past it like it’s not even there.
the pain of missing her is almost too much. When you lose someone that close, the enormity, the finality of it, sometimes hits you full force when you least expect it. When you are least prepared. And your heartbeat stutters and your knees nearly buckle, just like when you first heard they were gone. When you lose someone like Byrd, you never banish the grief completely. I’ve learned to tame grief, though, so it doesn’t run wild and ruin my life.
And I think I’m most grateful for time, which doesn’t always heal all wounds, but teaches us how to be happy again even with our scars.”
“I was no walk in the park, Merry.” “Who wants to walk in the park? I think that man would run wild with you.”
“Depression,” she goes on, “is a liar. If it will tell you no one loves you, that you’re not good enough, that you’re a burden or, in the most extreme cases, better off dead, then it can certainly convince you that you’re better off without the man you love, and that, ultimately, he’s better off without you.”
There is a corner of my heart, a room in my soul, where I must choose joy just for me and just because I want to be free of this. I want to heal, to be the best, most complete version of myself for my children, for my mother, for my friends. Most of all, for me.
Our traumas, the things that injure us in this life, even over time, are not always behind us. Sometimes they linger in the smell of a newborn baby. They surprise us in the taste of a home-cooked meal. They wait in the room at the end of the hall. They are with us. They are present. And there are some days when memories feel more real than those who remain, than the joys of this world.
