Like a Pebble in my Shoe

Ten years is a long time to miss someone.



It's not the way I was raised, to talk about these things, to show my hand when there are so many who would rather I plowed on, resolute, selfless, and griefless. (In fact, my grandma, a wise but infinitely distrustful mentor of mine, used to tell me to cry on my own time, because no one wants to help carry anyone else's baggage. That was my mantra for many years.)  I'm honestly a little nervous about writing this, for some have told me that it wasn't my place to grieve, when so many other people hurt so much more than I ever could. I didn't lose a daughter or a mother, so what was my pain? Thus I have been told, and thus I told myself, for almost a decade. But some things deserve talking about, and some things hurt whether or not people think you have a right to hurt over them.

I still miss her. There it is. I really, genuinely miss her. But it needs to be said that for the last three years or so, I definitely haven't thought about it every day, like I used to. There is pain, but it's an old pain now, one that I know and understand and cannot fear anymore. I confessed to Nicole today that it feels kind of like an old jacket. I can pull it out of my closet, try it on and look at myself in the mirror, feel its weight on my skin, let the smell and sight and texture of it take me back to that old place. But though it's precious and it's mine, I dont really wear it out of the house anymore. I don't have to. It's not like I can outgrow it. It always fits me, all tailor-made. But it goes back into the closet now, hanging there, waiting for me. But me, I wear different things these days.

I have made a life for myself. A life full of love and optimism and travels and dreams, of new memories and people worth trusting. I am things I never dreamt I could be. I am a whole person, happy and healthy and passionate and feeling. I cannot help but wonder. I cannot help but wish she could see the things I've done, because she always said I could. But when I think of her now, I remember - not the shock and the grief and the mislaid rage - but everything she was, good and bad, light and dark. I remember love, and I think that is important.

Ten years. A decade. A span of time lengthy enough to deserve its own damn word. A long time to miss someone. But we soldier on, missing and loving and knowing every day that we are forgetting things, and that's definitely bad, but maybe, just maybe, it is also really okay. We might think we're losing that which makes us poets, but all the same we might be losing that which holds us back. We are certainly losing, but maybe we aren't lost.