This morning, I stood mute and frozen, all around me, mouths opened and poured forth the hymn. The one from your final service.
My eyes were rooted to one spot, slowly filling with frozen water that could not fall.
Inhaling, I smelled the flowers that sat on my mantel, withering slowly, returning to the Earth, as you did. As we all will.
In that room, someone took comfort from those words that only stab me in the base of my brain. Over and over, with each refrain, the sharp blade lifts out and then go right back in. The hole is no wider or deeper-it hurts just the same.
I carry your voice in my heart, and the sounds of the laughter of those who left us. Until the us become a solitary I.
I drag the songs of the dead behind me.
Follow the trail I leave.
It leads to my grave.
you’re right you know. The ache of loss is beyond anything experienced and hurts with a hot, searing agony again and again. Because we who remain must continue, eventually a form of numbness sets in; until a song, a smell, a memory rips through and opens the wound again.
Yes, indeed.