Do not forget

I feel like crying... Crying, even though I have cried so much already. Crying, because somehow almost everything, I see, hear or touch touches my already fragile insides.

I know it has almost been a year. And what a year it has been! So tough the days, so gruesome, lonely and terribly frightening the nights! How did I get through this year almost all  on my own? How did I get through this year when friends I thought could support and hold me in times of desperation with time grew to be wary of my sorrows and too tired and too annoyed to see a boy grieving and struggling to be "normal" again?

I cry, but the tears only make me feel so much emptier and so much heavier than before. I cry, but the tiredness and heaviness only weighs heavier on my mind.

"Do not forget," a friend in grieving who lost her mother seven years ago reminded me, "That they do not know what it feels like to lose a parent..." She tried to joke about the fact that when someone gives her the same old platitude she feels like punching them in the face. Because they do not know, they cannot possibly know, and they have no right to tell you it's been too long or that you are behaving irrationally. Nothing takes too long with grief. It takes as long as it will take...