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Relativity

  • Writer: Aja Sun Houlton
    Aja Sun Houlton
  • Oct 18, 2019
  • 2 min read

Updated: Dec 28, 2019

i hadn't met Grief until last month.

since then, three people in my life have died.


and i'm sitting in a back pew in church

trying to listen to a sermon about discipleship

but Grief is taking me to faraway places.


i feel like i'm suspended in air—

time is stopped—and i can't move on.


one moment i am in sitting in anatomy class

and the next, i am crying in the hallway because

i don't know how to make sense of the world

without them in it.


i feel paralyzed by sadness and anger,

but mostly i just feel helpless.

i know that making a hot dish or writing a sympathy card

or sending flowers won't change a damn thing.


so instead I try to do things to honor them—

like going for a walk under the maple trees

and taking a drive through the fields at dusk

and building a meaningless homecoming float.


i try to remember the last words i said to them.


i want to ask them,

"don't you know how many people needed you?"


everything feels so senseless and cruel

and i find myself sorting through my emotions as if

i'll discover an explanation somewhere deep in my chest.


i don't know how to process loss

so i self destruct and i don't eat and i can't think,

and i'm wondering if time truly heals or if it just makes us forget.


i don't know if i will ever move on from all of this.

i don't know if i even want to.


i can't change what has come to pass,

so i simply do all that i can:


i cling to the people i love,

i am humbled by the frailty of life and the mystery of death,

and i pray to God for a comfort that transcends time and space

when it feels like my world has stopped.

—for kent, sandy, and taylor.

i have thought of each of you

every day since.



 
 
 

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