Today Tommy has been gone for 3 months. This, the 12th of the month, seems to sneak up on me, but I start having physical reactions to the date on about the 10th and definitely the 11th. Yesterday was ok, but I’m anticipating that today will be harder. This week I took a box out that had Tommy’s driver’s license in it as well as his photo and some smaller keepsakes. A few weeks after the service, I put all of the pictures of Tommy away except for the photos on my phone. It just became to hard to see his face in those pictures, but for the first couple of weeks, all I could do was pour over pictures. I wrote the following a few weeks ago but felt like today was the right day to share it. It’s rather dark and I don’t necessarily feel like this in my day to day life, but at the moment I gave this thought, this is what streamed out. If you’ve experienced grief, maybe this voice will feel familiar…
I am grief. I am the one that will be looming over your shoulder for the rest of your life. You haven’t known me in such a personal, close manner before, but you will now. You actually don’t even have a voice in the matter of our relationship. Long ago, I visited you when your grandparents passed, but those were in-order deaths and they were expected. Those lives were long lived and that was the story of their lives. This time, with this out-of-order death, you won’t be able to shake me.
I am sneaky. I will come in to haunt you anytime that you feel like you’re doing ok. I will remind you that you have a hole in your heart that won’t be fixed. It may get a bit smaller, but when you feel like it will, I will come back. I will be that small, dark angel on your shoulder holding a hammer to your head. I won’t let you go. I won’t let you know when I’m coming. I’m the sneaky stranger stalking you in the shadows of your being.
Now that you are getting to know me, we will be lifelong acquaintances. I will make sure that when you feel like you are able to relax and have a moment of forgetting, it won’t last long.
For the rest of your life, I will live in your heart as well as your head. I won’t always be cruel, but the diminishment of the cruelty will take time. There’s no timeline either. For you that time may be moments, months, years, there’s no telling. I will strike harder on Fridays, the day of the week that you lost him. I will strike hard on the 12th of every month. I will be ever-present on holidays and even if you try to change your surroundings, I will follow. I will never let you go. I will be the dark figure in the corner of the dark room. I will be the sound of the wolves howling across the river. I will be the vultures in the field, hovering over the latest kill.
I will never leave you.
This photo was taken at my grandfather’s funeral.
