Grief - Loss

Marie Carmel P - July 14, 2025

Sometimes, the world is so uncertain and pale—
Nothing feels wholly right, the ground beneath you quivers, unsteady.

Your heart presses heavy in your chest as you strain to better understand:
You analyze, trace through emotion after emotion,
Yet nothing surfaces. Only sadness, fear, anxiety, remain.

You linger in that raw, unrelenting feeling.
From time to time, a flicker of grace glows—a trembling light of gratitude
for the moments, for the presence that once filled every corner.
Then sorrow descends anew—still heavy,
and your heart seems to harden, as if in self‑preservation, trying to shield you from the ache it cannot silence. 

But more profoundly - to guard against forgetting them, you don’t want to forget. 

At last it arrives: the simple truth that turns your world inward—
I am sad. I lost someone so dear. I miss them.
Even at ninety‑nine years old, and despite their suffering, their passing leaves an emptiness that memory cannot fill.

There will be no phone calls—no voices threading through time—
no shared conversation about the past, the present, or the state of the world.

No more time spent listening together to the beautiful music of our homeland, music they played as a saxophonist.

These final silences form the shape of mourning and loss.

This, my friend, is what grief feels like for me.

I drift through days, uncertain how to move —
not wanting to remain idle, yet unwilling to rush.
In all this, I’m quietly drawn to emulate the discipline,
the fierce love for life they embodied—even in their final breath.
I don’t want to squander time, for in every action
I seek to honor that spirit they now carry beyond.  

I see them in every breeze that blows, 

they visit often as beautiful butterflies - sometimes as a dragon fly, a gentle bee brushing my arm - 

but most often, as a yellowish white butterfly. 

This echoes what many grieving heart attest:

Butterflies can become messengers of the departed, 

A reminder that their presence, love endures beyond absence

Missing you is not easy - but forgetting you is unthinkable and not an option.  

As I remember you, your music, the fullness of who you were, 

I find myself tearing up when I hear the melodies you played and loved.  

Loss - a fierce testimony to love itself.