Status Updates From Grief Is for People

There’s a translucent membrane around everything, a bubble that moves with every step. Russell is so close, right on the other side. Like the ring, trapped inside my pinky, I have the strongest sensation that if I only knew where to push, I could reach through and pull him back. The bubble Hart ends with each passing day. By living, I am, by default, leaving him.

The miracle of life is not that we have it, it’s that most of us wake up every day and agree to fight for it, to hold it in our arms, even when it squirms to get away. It’s a miracle, a genuine miracle, that the reverse doesn’t happen more often.

It’s impossible to predict how much you’ll miss something when it’s gone, to game grief in advance. We fend off the worry that we’re taking our lives for granted by feeding ourselves the lie that we understand the value of their components. This belief is necessary for our choices, for the ordering of priorities. But it’s flimsy.