The weight of grief

The weight of Grief - Celeste Roberge

Sometimes, I guess, it does feel like this. Heavy, like it could bring you to your knees right there in the middle of whatever you're doing. Like your whole body is made of stones that rub painfully together if you try to move. The weight is too much and movement becomes impossible.

But, mostly, I still think it is waves, invisible waves that seem to bypass everyone else, but target only you and knock you over with their force, until you can't breathe and all you can see is blackness. And if there are stones, they are being hurled at your head.

Sometimes I have an image of the sea with a walkway reaching out into the ocean. If I look back to the beach, that is where I see my parents and my past. They waved me off to make my own way in the world. And then there were the people who walked alongside me for a while but they took a different turning. They preferred to walk on the cliff path or stayed safely on the promenade. But you were walking alongside me and walking with me into the future and suddenly you are gone. And the walkway stops abruptly at the edge of an unforgiving sea and I am left screaming into the darkness. There is nothing to hold onto out there. There is no desert island to swim to. There is no boat to rescue me and the walkway behind me has crumbled into the sea. There is nowhere left to go. I feel completely lost and alone, unanchored with nothing in the distance to reach for.

Frantically, I search for something to build a future from, weaving sticks and seaweed together, hoping to make a raft. But it is futile because sticks remind me of you and seaweed reminds me of you and you have the string.

I need someone to hold onto, someone who can hold me through this pain and torment, someone who can make this bearable. But that person is gone too. There is no harbour in your arms anymore. All is sea and darkness, and, yes, sometimes, the weight of rocks.