Grief is everywhere

Grief is everywhere.

In the awful realisation of awakening and  the curling back into night-time in search of lost dreams.
In the smell of your empty fleece, the small comfort of familiar fabric without the solidity of a body.
In the space at your side of the bed where I will you to appear as if I can conjure you by love alone.
It's in reaching out hopelessly to pat duvet furrows in search of limbs that I know are not there.

Grief is the card you gave me at New Year, wishing that all my dreams would come true.

Grief is in the view from the bedroom window,
in the city lights that you loved to watch when you couldn't sleep. And in the morning sky.
Grief is played in the song on the radio as I make breakfast.
Grief is dragged like the weight of the bin that I bring to the side of the curb,
knowing that this, like everything, is my job and my job alone.

Grief is every white van that drives by and every couple that walk hand in hand.

Grief is there when I gaze down my street and know that I will never,
ever see you walking towards me again.
Grief is at the door when I open it and know that you will never be the guest knocking loudly,
waiting to come in.
I let grief in instead.

Grief is there in the quiet, momentary forgetting and the loud remembering that follows.

Grief is in the playground at school where other mums
share normal information and smiles as if nothing has changed;
where I am the only one who knows that the whole world has been
rearranged and all its parts put back in the wrong place.

Grief is knowing all of your hopes and plans that will never be.

Grief is every time I walk away from a friend,
knowing that I am walking back to an empty space,
to a life where you are not there. Where you will never be.
Grief is sobbing my way towards home because I cannot tell you about my day.

Grief is trying to build your Meccano with my son and not knowing how it works.

Grief is looking at photos from all of the years that I didn't know you.
Grief is knowing that you wished I had been there.
Grief is feeling memories slipping away already and trying to hold onto them.
Grief is the limbo of knowing that there is no way back and no desire for the future.

Grief is your mum who rocks your t-shirt in arms where her baby once lay.

Grief is walking where we once walked, remembering how we talked.
A film, played backwards, snapshots of time being erased until we are at the start and you don't exist.
Grief is the inappropriateness of sunshine, the horror of spring.
Grief is everywhere. And everything.