Island

The stupid thing about grief is that it seems to isolate you. I float like an island, there are terrifying waves underneath me. A great crack has gone through the middle of us and I don’t know who to tell, or what I would say. 

Look, I want to say. Everything is different. Shaken. One of the support beams of our house has been ripped away. We are not who we were. A friend left the world and this changes everything. We are a little less us. We are diminished. And yet we have to go on as if everything is the same, doing the same things, eating and sleeping and walking around on our feet. 

Sometimes I don’t know if we’ll make it. 

A husband’s best friend is a very reassuring person. Ian and I used to look at each other as if to say, “this guy. We both love this guy and he drives us crazy and he’s the best and we’ll both love him forever.” And then there were our two families. We did things, we were us. We are still two families, but now there are less of us. Oh how precious friends are! I feel this desperation, like, there aren’t enough of us and we can’t lose even one! It’s love. We can’t afford to lose anybody. 

But we did. And he is safe in the everlasting arms. I have not even one tiny worry for him. I only worry about us. About Chinua and I orbiting each other in the night, talking, not talking, circling around all the things we can’t find a way to speak out. Isolated in grief, even though we are together. 

But this is what I know. Ian was our friend. He loved us. He loved his family. Nothing can erase that. I know that Jesus wept. I also know that God is good, that beauty spills out of the cracks in stones, springs out of sidewalks. Trees volunteer to grow from compost heaps. People do the kindest, most generous things for one another. The world seems shaky but all is not lost. Love will cover this, even this.