The Shift

Over years, my grief has shifted from that sharp knife of acute pain, to the kind of grief that can sit with you always, like a familiar tug I constantly bend to pull forward. If I could see my outline in colour, I think it would be a hazy blue, lighter at the edges than I think, shimmering off every surface, between each finger + toe. 
My grief has never lessened for my son, but my grief has softened. 

Only a year ago I started to feel the lightening of it, and it terrified me. My reaction was to grip at the loss tighter, to wrap my fists around it and hold it close. I wanted every ounce of Lochlan to myself, both his life, and his death. The idea of losing the sharp pain of his loss wasn’t something I could let happen - it felt strangling, the idea of losing anything,  after I lost him. 

I saw friends learning to live with loss, and I couldn’t understand it. How could they laugh, how could they appear to anyone as anything but broken? My fear of losing the muddy movements of acute grief turned to judgement, and I’ll admit I spent some time thinking my loss was far greater than anyone else’s. 

Grief does this. There is no guilt. It covers our eyes with darkness, so darkness is all we see. 

This shift has been slow and peaceful for me, and for you it might be much different. For you, this shift might be years away, or maybe my words have touched on something you have felt happening, but couldn’t name. This shift, to lifelong grief is both welcomed, and bitter. To feel a lightness around death has given me room to breathe again, but it also means I’ve accepted that this loss is permanent. 

Lochlan, my love. You are not here in my arms, but you are everywhere else. You surround me in moments that are ordinary, and extraordinary. A gift I didn’t want, but a gift I now peacefully accept. This change in me is hard earned, lost moments exchanged for memories now dipped in gold. 

When the wind shifts, I know it’s you brushing against my cheek. Not the caress I hoped for, but the caress I’ll forever keep.