What I'm Not Going to Write

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I’m not going to write about how life could go on without you, how maybe one day I could be okay. I’m not going to write about how I might get to a place where this unbearable weight is not my constant companion - because unbearable as it may be, it’s the weight that keeps you close. Right now it’s my grief that keeps you with me. I don’t trust what others say about moving forward, about bringing you along with me into the future.

The thought of moving forward makes me feel like I’m dropping pieces of you behind me, casually letting you fall like breadcrumbs, the distance from my pain becoming a slippery slope toward my forgetting.

I’m not going to write about how terrified I am of forgetting you. Forgetting how you laughed, how you moved, how your energy felt in a room. Forgetting the touch of you - knowing that there is no way to collect the feeling of touch, no photograph to capture it, no video that can translate. Will I forget what it felt like to hold your hand? What the warmth of it felt like in mine, cradling those slender fingers and delicate bones? Will I forget what it felt like to hug your body close to mine after your oxygen was removed, all those cumbersome tubes finally taken away?

Will I lose the feeling of what it was like to scoop you up and gather you into my arms, no longer afraid that I might hurt you (those fragile bones, those points of pain, that tiny frame that endured so much), that long-awaited moment when I was finally given access to all the parts of your sweet and broken body? Will I forget the way I crawled into your bed and wrapped my arms and legs around you, the warmth of my head against your shoulder, as I became aware of the sound of my own gasping and wailing? Will I forget how it felt to have your face cradled in my hands, my forehead pressed to yours, as I said to you over and over and over again, “I’ll never let you go, I’ll never let you go, you’re with me forever, I’ll never let you go”?

Will I forget that?

Will it leave me?

Will you leave me?

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