Tag Archives: loss

Grief, for me, has never not been complex.
I have never mastered the quiet grief my mother had for Ireland-
a longing and pursuit for oceans
until she died too young and too far from home.
The grief I have for her is formative to every part of who I am.

Nor have I grieved my father
whose living haunts as me equally
as his death terrifies me.
So much better unsaid,
so much better buried while he’s still alive.

And my brother,
my broken,
brutal,
brilliant brother.
Like my dad, I buried him before he was dead,
but, now that he is gone,
the grief I feel for him overwhelms me at times.
I forget to breathe
when I remember he’s not in the world.

So when I find out I will have to grieve you.
When I find out you are leaving.
My heart grieves in complex ways.

This is to warn you,
that when we say goodbye,
and something inside me disappears,
it’s the place where I held you in my heart.
I have gone to patch it up,
along side all the other patches and holes,
so I can live and breathe in a world
with so much loss.