Mist

Grief is a difficult concept to define. On one hand, it’s simple: there was something you love deeply, and now it’s gone. But that’s just what happens. Grief is what happens after a loss. But what does it feel like? What is it like to live it?

I’ve heard it described in many ways, explained through metaphors and analogies, though none of them seems to land perfectly for me. So here’s my attempt: grief is an ever-shifting entity made of mist. It can be dark, enveloping, suffocating. Alone at night, no stars above, mist all around, bone-chilling isolation, and I’m caught without a jacket. Then comes the pain, so acute. I am brought to my knees, screaming there is nothing here to go on. My voice is immediately sucked into the mist, silenced. No one outside hears my cries.

But it’s not always night.

Sometimes, when the light is just right, memories project onto the misty screen all around me. I see an old self. I see our life in front of my eyes, vivid, in full color. Laughters, conversations, geeking out on definitions of words, dirty socks shed by the sofa. The sensation of your eyebrows against my lips. Me demanding butterfly kisses. You flicking your cheek in an uncanny imitation of a water drop. In the mist, I find a sense of certainty and security. Everything I have ever cherished forever mine to keep.

This pain is a tolerable one. Even a sweet one for it carries the joy of having once had. I hold onto it tightly because this is the remains of our love not even death can take away.

Other times, the sun is out. I’m with people who bring with them light and warmth. I can almost forget the mist is there. I am happy, full, loved. I seek new experiences and hope for the future. I get a little too excited about filing my own taxes. I am constantly reminded of my capacity to love.

I still see everything through the mist of how I wish you were here. But for a moment, I can’t remember the pain. I can’t even fathom how it could be that painful. Surely it was an exaggeration of the mind.

This version of me interfaces with the outside. It’s not a facade, because there is no deliberate pretending on my part. It is perhaps a semblance. A continuation of the old self before the tempering of loss, before the mist became mine.