Jenna Berggren’s Reviews > Before I Forget > Status Update

‘It’s an interesting idea, the regenerating heart. After all, we do go on no matter how much we shutter with grief. Maybe our hearts don’t ache because they’re scarred or broken or because something is wrong, maybe they ache because they’re shape shifting. Like the growth spurts of our youth, they make us quake with change but once weathered they leave us stronger and more ourselves…’

‘…and I try to remind myself talking is only one way of relating and perhaps we rely too heavily on it, forgetting that we can also connect through gestures, sounds, glances. I think about the non-verbal and pre-verbal entities in our lives: Animals, newborns. They don’t want our explanations of love, they want to see it in action. ‘Do you feed me? Brush me? Soothe me? Am I safe?’’

‘As I watch him, I’m hit with a future ache about the time when he will no longer be here. I’ve heard it called anticipatory grief, but that’s too clinical for me. There’s no adequate label for this feeling of something eating away at you, the growing realization that someday you’ll be devastated. So why not start now? Get ahead of it, beat your heartbreak to the punch.’