The main thing we think of in mourning is the loss of the individual who’s died.
Their ever-conspicuous absence.
The black hole that can never be filled.
That’s the overwhelming, unending sadness that everyone understands: the indescribable loss of the Other, someone who meant life and health and joy and peace to our souls.
But there’s also a profound loss of SELF involved in mourning.
The part of myself that is connected to Libby, the conversations and experiences and deep soul connection that were only between the two of us, that part of my SELF is lost.
In grief, we are always going to be missing that part of ourselves that can never be recovered, the part that died with our beloved.
I didn’t understand that before.
It is painfully clear to me now.
I miss my Self, the Self I was with her.
I don’t think there is another person who can bring that Self back to me.
That part of me is gone.
So often, I feel that she is just around the corner, in another room, ready to walk in at any second with laughter and a story, just like always.
And then she doesn’t.
And when the grief hits again, it still feels as though the stars have burned out, turned to dust in the vastness of space, and I am left without direction.
The light that she was, there is no other like her.