Grief Moved In

Living with absence, making room for love

Grief moved in. She didn’t knock, didn’t wait, just turned the tap on, and kept on running. Some days, I try to shut it off, but it leaks through the cracks in me. Sometimes I talk to a friend, and it helps, until it doesn’t. Like being spun too fast on a fairground ride you asked for but forgot how to stop. Grief doesn’t yell, but she hums through my chest, a background song that won’t end. She lives in the chair I sit in, in the smell of my morning coffee, in the space where someone used to be. On my morning runs, through the carriages of the tube, she's there. Unquestionably there and unquestionably not there. It’s not just pain. There’s love too. Like they’ve been holding hands, just out of sight. I used to think grief would go when healing came. But now I know, they sit together on my couch, passing me tissues and asking what I need today. Some days, I answer. Some days, I don’t. My heart says, “Feel it all.” My head says, “Why still?” And I, I just breathe. Because my lungs don’t need reasons. They only need this moment, this breath, this life, as it is. And then, before she could knock again, she opens the door. Smiling, like she’d been here all along, in the steam of the kettle, in the wind through the trees, she said, “There you are.”

 I offer therapy and coaching in London and online.