Bean has been gone 15 days, and we are still unraveling. We are unraveling grief in layers. The hat found in the jacket pocket. The nursery door closed. The cry you think you hear at night. The last time we were here was with her.
We are unraveling our lives. Living for just two again is easy and yet so hard. The possibilities are endless and yet small. We can eat where we want and wake when we want, and yet this isn’t what we want. Living for just what we want is so flat in comparison.
We are unraveling our home. The knives are still on top of the fridge, social worker ready. The drawers are still child locked. The rooms are giant and empty as part of the unraveling was to move what we could not bare to see each morning to the room where we would not have to see it.
We are unraveling memories. Seven and a half months is both short and her lifetime. The tiny newborn wrapped like a burrito. The seven month old who discovered her feet and wouldn’t let go. The pictures we won’t take down for now because she was here, and we don’t pretend she wasn’t. And the memories remind us that the unraveling was worth it. Loving her was worth it. Is worth it.
We are unraveling grief one day at a time. But you cannot untangle your life from the life of a child. No matter how you clean up, no matter what you hide away, or where you don’t go. There is no being free from this tangled state, nor would we wish to be. Our lives have been intertwined, tangled, wrapped up together for a time. We will unravel grief, but not this tie. It has been 15 days, it has been a moment, it has been a year of unraveling.
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