Yesterday, I found myself with hours of free time and did not have the attention span for watching Housewives drama. I picked up the book my therapist suggested. I started it a week ago and put it down when I realized my thoughts were wandering and whole pages were turning without my knowing what was on them. A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis is an inside view of how he experienced his wife dying and his internal narrative that came with negotiating loss. I am not someone who finds comfort in the concept of God and it does not take a skilled analyst to see the religious undertones of Chronicles of Narnia. I started reading the book with skepticism as to how I can find kinship in this author’s experience. Kinship is what I’m hungry for. I need stories of other people examining their experience of loss, of grief, and of life after death.

As I sat to read, the following passage literally took my breath away. Lewis is describing the inaccuracy of memory, and how our brains efficiently eliminate details of our loved ones because we grow so acclimated to their presence, we do not need to remember every line, color and shape of their physical being. We know our loved ones in our bodies, in our souls. Then Death begs the questions of what is real in our memory, and where do our loved ones go when they are gone from what we remember?

“Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes – like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night – little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of her. The real shape will be quite hidden in the end. Ten minutes – ten seconds – of the real H. would correct all this. And yet, even if those ten seconds were allowed me, one second later the little flakes would begin to fall again.” – C.S. Lewis

For a moment I imagined what it would be like to have 10 seconds with Jeffrey. 30 days after his death and the idea of having more time had not crossed my mind. He died. He is gone. That’s it. I started crying on the great expanse of my mother’s living room sofa. How had I not thought of this, of what it would be like to see him again? The comfort of his hug and hearing his voice feels so overwhelming. He was always so warm. I miss his presence and his love enveloping me. The closest I have come to feeling him is standing in the sun on these crisp Winter days. As I cried on the sofa, I felt embarrassed for not having thought of bargaining for time earlier in the 30 days since he died. Then I remembered that there is nothing to bargain for. Jeffrey died. He is not coming back. I will never ever receive a hug from him again.

I am not sure how to make meaning of the feeling in my body that I can only describe as longing, emptiness, and weight. I feel heaviness in my bones and muscles. Loss is a stomachache, a panic attack, and the swelling under my eyelashes documenting the tears freshly leaked from my eyes.

I wonder if Jeffrey read A Grief Observed or not. I wonder if he would have liked it. What would his critiques have been? So far, losing Jeffrey has meant having to come to terms with the fact that I will never ever know the answers to these questions.

Fuck.