Intense sunset sky dotted with little blackbirds. Photo.
A changing sky

Things are in a good place for me right now. That’s for me personally, of course. Let’s all not look at the world. Just for a moment. You’ve got my permission. Go ahead. Breathe out.

The last half of last year was not so good a place. A lot of intense things happened quite quickly.

Some of them weren’t great. Some of them will remain indescribable until the ends of time, for all of the unexpected kindnesses that came along. Grief is a complicated bastard, isn’t it?

And, now, here I am, unravelling some of the tangles life left me. The forgotten emails. The unsent packages. The lost photos. The whole big mess.

It feels good. Not easy, but satisfying. Like the end of a truly great book. It’s probably not a Disney-style happy ending, but it feels right. It feels okay.

I think we hear a lot about surviving the moment of someone’s passing. But maybe this is what it feels like to continue on. It doesn’t snap into place. There’s a gentle unweaving of the twist of temporary chaos that surrounds death. Your life settles around you and your heart rebuilds.

You panic, because you think you might lose touch with that someone you lost. Or lose memories. Or lose something.

But it’s okay. Because you don’t lose them. You gather them in. You reweave your story, and you bundle them in with you.

You continue on, their memories a part of your life. And you realise what felt like life unravelling is life starting again. The tapestry is different. It feels strange. It feels coarse, but it’s made of the same stuff. It’s still you.

And for always and ever, it will still be them.