What you don't know

What you don't know is that, for me, it doesn't go away. That grief doesn't just surface when someone mentions his name, or when I see something that reminds me of him. Grief is with me constantly. I am clothed in grief, I wear it inside out. 

They say it hits you in waves and they are right, but I am swimming in grief all day long and the waves pound over me in relentless succession. Sometimes they actually knock me out. Yesterday morning I stumbled as I tried to perform the simple routine tasks of deposting my son at school. 

When you try to speak to me and I don't reply it is not because I am rude, it is because I can't see your face through the spray of those waves. Everything is blurred.

Or maybe I am rude too. Because I don't give a damn. I don't want to speak to anyone unless they're saying his name. I don't want to know anything that isn't him. I would rather turn around and swim back out to sea, treading water and battered by waves that keep me close to his memory.