Grief

Once upon a time I was a bartender. If you’ve ever been a bartender, you’ll know that 99% of your job is being a therapist. One of my dear regulars we will name Lucy for anonymity, had lost her husband the prior year. She was in her early 50s, with three beautiful grown girls who had just fledged the nest. I remember her telling me she saw him in a bar. She said she pointed to him, and said “I’m going to marry that man”. And she did.

We spent the next year discussing someone we will name “The Dentist”.

The Dentist was nothing like her late husband. He was overly confident, aloof, and tbh kind of a fuck boy. She told me of the time they were first intimate, and how he had removed the wedding ring from the chain around her neck as it was in between them. A ring she had not removed in a very long time.

She spent the next hour riddled with guilt. Combing over how she could do such a thing to him.

When it suddenly hit me.

He isn’t your whole book. Not The Dentist. Her late husband.

For her late husband, she was his book. But for her, her life was written with him as many chapters but not the entire book. You see, even when chapters are the most brilliant of a book, they aren’t every page.

Grief is never linear nor fair. Grief is not forgiving or patient.

Grief rears its ugly head in the most inopportune time. But it lives with you. It stays with you. Through the rest of your chapters. But, like the loss, it isn’t your whole book.

I don’t know who will read this, but maybe someone is feeling guilt for moving on. Except you aren’t moving on. You’re just writing the next chapters.