then someday you wake up and it is somehow 7 years later. it is not truly 7 years, since so much comes with you that it is as if it were brand new. dreams come and crush you with a glimpse of a profile, or a brief conversation, and you wake feeling completely dislocated and alone.
one thing that does not diminish is grief. yes, it becomes less frequent. but when it comes, it comes and sits and eats with its fingers from your plate, and picks at your clothing, and reaches in and tugs at heart and lungs and bowels. it steals sleep, breaks things at random, leaves with you in disarray, tucked around your tender heart. and you know, as you sweep up, as you straighten the fanned piles and eat bland food, that it will come again. creating order, gathering up, surviving, these are temporary. soon, the door will blow open with a gust of wind, and knock everything down again. but you take care, attend to the pieces.
one thing that does not diminish is guilt. it feels like heavy clay on thick soled boots. it makes you walk differently, deliberately, each step an effort. you feel you are moving forward but really, guilt is directionless, for guilt there is no "forward", but there is motion. i encourage you to walk, to remember how to move, since it is so easy to get stuck. so easy to be still and feel it suck you down into nowhere. there is no solution for this that i've found but movement. just keep moving.
one thing that does not diminish is sadness. the feeling of loss is always there. it cannot be undone. there is no un-losing.
