Nobody tells you what grief is like ten years later,
how it feels so far away, and almost like it was yesterday.
It is true what they say, that time is a healer, but do you ever really deal with grief?
Do you ever really heal?
Is there such a thing
when the part of you that made you whole,
is now missing?

Grief is not tangible, and yet it never disappears.
It is learning to live with absence and the loss
year after year
in the hope that it won’t feel as raw
as it did when it was birthed.

Ten years of grief does not look the same
for it is in its nature
to change
with the seasons, and with you as a human being
but the only thing it cannot change
is its reason.

Ten years later and it hurts less
more a dull ache than a piercing pain
that you feel deep in your bones and your soul.

But it still lives somewhere inside you,
when you see a photograph or hear a song,
the kind that makes you pull over because the tears are strong
and though you haven’t cried over it in a long, long time
it cuts you deep just like it did the first.

Ten years of grief and you barely notice it these days,
you forget it’s there until birthdays and holidays,
when the absence is clear.

Ten years of grief and it’s hard to believe,
that you have been living with it for a decade;
that somehow you made it through
when you were convinced,
that it would be the death of you, too.

Wise words once said:
‘grief is the price we pay for love’
that it is the consequence we put upon ourselves,
for opening our hearts up.

If that’s true
what a beautiful thing,
grief is.