I vividly remember logging onto Facebook and staring at his messenger icon hoping he would come online. That it was all a misunderstanding and it wasn’t real. Last active… The hours ticked over into days, then into weeks. Now it has almost been 11 months. Remembering it as though it were yesterday. Today I still feel the longing, waiting and wishing just as before although it’s no longer as intense.

 

Time has moved so quickly. Hours, to weeks, to months, soon it will be a year. Disbelief at how quickly time has passed, the last 327 days of my life are mostly a blur. But the fog with time is lifting and no longer as heavy as before.

There are days that it feels as though my breath has been ripped from my chest, I struggle to breathe without him, days I don’t want to breathe without him. But those days are becoming less frequent and I cannot help but feel guilty about that.

Every thought and emotion I have now, whether it be happy, sad or guilty stems from my grief. I believe it always will, forever all-consuming but differently than before.

There is not a day that passes where I don’t wish he were here, that I don’t talk to him. And still there has not been one night that I haven’t said out loud to him “I love you”.  But I no longer cry every night and I feel guilty about that, guilty for healing.  I am writing this post to offer hope from pain. A question I use to ask daily was “Does the pain ever end? And when will it stop hurting?”. The only way I can answer that now is, the pain will always be there but gradually with time it changes form. Remaining in our hearts alongside the longing, the wishing, the questions, the denial, the memories, the anger, the anxiety, the ache. All the emotions that I felt constantly consumed by are still present each day just no longer felt all at once, rather they come individually, randomly and unexpectedly. 

And sometimes just as you feel grief beginning to ease something happens that triggers a pain so intense it’s as though you have been thrown back to the day life changed.

 

Over the last week I made the decision to change my profile photo on Facebook from a picture of John and I to one of only me. It wasn’t easy to do and almost instantly I wanted to change it back. I felt guilty about changing it. As much as I feel guilty about saying this, I want to move forward, I want to be happy, that is why I changed it. For me it was an attempt at taking a step forward.  Over a week later and I still feel anxious about something so trivial to most.  

 

Grief is unending and changes constantly. So although I feel this way now, next week or tomorrow may be entirely different again. I know though that when I was in the early stages of my grief, I wanted to know what to expect and when and how long for. I searched for answers everywhere. I still don’t have all those answers, I maybe never will but it’s my hope that this post helps others seeking some clarity among the chaos that is grief.