A Story I Cannot Tell
“Tell me about them.”
It should have been an easy question.
The kind people ask over coffee, across dinner tables, in passing conversation when they notice a name you no longer say out loud.
Instead, I stared into my cup and watched the surface tremble.
Tell me about them.
As if there was a version of this story that could be told without bleeding.
I opened my mouth and closed it again.
How do I explain someone I still love?
How do I tell you about the person who taught my heart both devotion and grief? The person whose absence occupies rooms more completely than most people’s presence ever could?
I could tell you what they looked like. I could tell you their favorite songs, the way they laughed, the small details that still arrive without invitation. But none of those things would explain why speaking about them feels like touching a bruise to check if it still hurts.
And it does.
The truth is, I do not speak about them because I have not finished surviving them.
People assume silence means indifference. They do not understand that sometimes silence is what remains when love has nowhere left to go.
So I looked back at the person waiting for an answer and offered the only honest one I had.
“I don’t know how to talk about them yet.”
They nodded politely, unaware that I had just revealed the entire story.
Because some losses do not end when people leave.
Some losses become companions.
And grief, I have learned, is simply love that can no longer reach its destination. Grief, the final act of love.
I suspect I will carry mine for the rest of my life.
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