2.

Grief and love and loss are layered. They inform one another. Grief is love.

What doesn't show is the pain. It's even physical pain at times. It doesn't show because there is no way to describe it, to completely share it. It's unknowable until you have to know it. And then you wish you'd never met it.

What you don't know about grief is that it's all the time. I might look like I'm going on with my day, going to the grocery store, opening the mail, answering phone calls, but what you don't know is that there's a background track that plays all the time. It is filled with memories, sadness, so much sadness, regrets, longings, dreams shattered, confusion, shock. And it's always playing. You just don't hear it, or see it, or feel it. Only I do. And there's no way to really describe it you. You wouldn't understand until you had to.

Something you can't know about grief is how much it hurts. How much it is a thread that is now strung through every part of my life. Everything I do is impacted by it and there is no escaping it. Is is ever present and it is raw. Fresh wounds are formed as the days go on. Each new wound a reminder of how she's gone. Everywhere I look and everywhere I go there are reminders about how my mom is gone. What you don't know is that I have to keep going anyways. All of the things that have to get done - and a lot of the time they keep not getting done because it's too hard. Sometimes the track is too loud and I can't do anything else. And there's no way around it.

What you don't know is how consuming the loss is. How can someone that is gone take up so much space?

What is true about grief is that it hurts. The loss is too deep to comprehend. There's grief for the loss and then for all of the dreams you had that are now never going to happen. What you don't know is how much I think about how my mom will never get to hold my own children. How she'll never be able to be a grandmother. What you don't know is how much I think about how I can never pick up the phone to call her. How much I think about never being able to hold her hand again, never being able to hug her again. What doesn't show is how much I long to be held and comforted by my mom. How much my heart is broken about all of the things I'll never get to do with her again.

I can't show how much it hurts because if I let it all out, the tsunami would sweep me away and drown me. What you don't know is that even when I'm having a conversation, I'm also listening to the track in the background - I can never really be fully present. Part of me wishes you never have to know, because what I do know is that it's just too much for a person to bear.