Its February again. Again. It engulfs me.
Five years ago I stood at the beach on a hot summers morning telling my friends how worried I was about his health. Five years ago he was still alive. Just.
There are still days I can’t breathe.
“I hope you aren’t going to grieve all over the internet” a friend said to me a few days afterwards. I didn’t know then how I would grieve. I still don't. I didn’t know then that grief is unending. Like water, its seeps into the cracks. It floods the lowest places.
The Portuguese have a word. “Saudade” it is a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. It often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return. It has been described as "the love that remains" after someone is gone. It brings sad and happy feelings altogether, sadness for missing and happiness for having experienced the feeling.
“In the air, we'd meet as friends
Equals in the sky,
and I would be content to watch you fly
From the ground you're just someone
who's closer to the sun,
and I am just the shadow by your side.” - Janis Ian
