To grieve the loss of a person, who is still alive

How do we grieve over a person who is still alive, how can we feel the the different stages, the denial, the anger, the bargaining, depression, and acceptance, when the person hasn’t passed. Instead of passing, they’ve simply left us, not the world, but us.

How do we move forward past, when the person who we had held so much love, and affection for, walks past us, as though the memories we’ve shared don’t sit in the back of our minds.

Difficult, to move past

Its a difficult thing to push through, and a merely impossible subject to describe. Because you feel almost everything you’d feel, if they were dead. And maybe, there wouldn’t even be a difference, because either way, their presence is no longer to be found by you.

To grieve the loss of a person who is still alive, means the person must’ve meant a lot more than you’d expect. When people drift, disappear from our lives, that doesn’t necessarily mean we will be grieving. Grief is strong, and difficult process that takes time, and work to get past. To grieve, is to mourn for the person we’ve lost. To mourn for their presence, their laughs, their smiles. To long for their touch and comfort, to long for the moments you’ve shared that now will only morph into a memory instead of a time to reminisce with them about.

Seeing them everywhere you go

Its to find them in everyone you find, talk to, befriend. Their faces splattered on every person you pass in the streets, to hear the ring of their voice in other peoples tone. To recognize things people say, that they used to say, songs, you and them would listen too. To find objects that remind you of them, remind you of who they used to be, of the pair you and them used to make.

Finding their jokes in your friends humor, finding their smile in strangers. Watching the movies you’ve watched with them, with the memories playing out before you. Listening to the music you’d yell your heart out too, remembering everything.

The spread to everything, like poison to flowers

They infect everything and everyone with their absence, the clothes you wear, the perfume you smell. The places you visit, are smeared with them, front and back. No matter how hard you try, you force yourself to forget, they are everywhere. In the books you read, in the videos you watch. The food you eat, and the bed you sleep in.

They mutate themselves into everything familiar and unfamiliar to you. And its not as easy as to lock yourself in an empty room, blank of color, because even then, the thought of them would infiltrate your mind.

The grief we feel, is a result of the love we once had, once shared

To grieve now, is to love then. You had to truly love, truly admire, with tender affection, to now go as far as to grieve, when they are no longer present. But instead missing from the holes they used to fill. There are clear marks, and gaps. Because they made up who you were, they gave you your smile, your laugh, even if with the smiles and laughs, they gave you the cries.

Seeing them

When you see them, you cant just walk past, you stare, you watch them live their life, while yours is crumbling to pieces beneath you. You watch them smile, you watch them be content with whom they are, who their with. While you stand isolated, with your hands, with your legs ripped away from you, because they were the pieces you needed to fulfill yourself, even if they gave you an empty plate. Their existence, was enough, to fill the missing parts of you, healing them, with soft bandages wrapped around the old broken wounds.

Now the wounds are revealed once more, infected with the sour taste of their absence.