It’s like an ache, not just this realisation that it is impossible, but an actual physical sensation. Starting as a burning flutter in the chest, a butterfly on fire trapped in a cage, knocking against the chest walls willing to escape. The ache travels up the throat, grasping around it. The brains way of reminding us that a conversation with you is now impossible.
Each night, as I lay in our bed, I do the exact same movement, my head tips to the side, to view your space, a vast emptiness, which was once where you lay. The place we said our final goodbyes. It fills me with despair every night. A cruel reminder of my loss. Sometimes I reach my foot out to your side, longing to find your feet, a connection. Knowing I won’t find what I am looking for, yet I repeat the search most nights.
I think back to better days, both of us laying in our bed, talking about something or nothing. Looking back, it is hard to imagine what we spoke about every single night. Many conversations lacked importance. Yet now, how I long to have unimportant conversations with you again.
Just like all things that are ablaze, the butterflies burn out eventually and fall in to the pit of their cage. The feeling subsides. And with a huge sigh, another night succumbs to the deafening silence that is loss.
Surviving Widowhood 