I was having a low and quiet evening – indulging and stoking my grief – when the universe sent me a friend.
Grief is a lonely road but I am not traveling it alone. A fellow traveler reached out and kept me company for an hour or two last night. A friend I haven’t talked to in quite a while called and we walked together for a while.
There is a special camaraderie between people who are on this particular road, people who are walking in the same shoes pace themselves differently. They reach out from a place of knowing, they sense the break in your heart through the break in their own. It feels okay to cry when you’re talking with someone who gets it. But more than that, it feels okay to laugh.
After two and a half years of travel my friend’s voice was still raw with emotions as thick as my own. Where that may have been disheartening for a moment there was also comfort in the fact he is still walking, that he can still feel the pain and move through it. He is still standing even as he feels his loss – he is moving forward and not forgetting.
I worry about the tomorrows, I worry my memories will fade. I worry that as I get further away from the initial blow I will forget. A random phone call from an intuitive friend assured me that I won’t.