The Wall

My son laughed tonight, and for half a second it sounded like her. That tiny overlap in sound hit me so hard I had to turn away so he wouldn’t see my face. He was just being a kid. Being loud. Being alive. And I’m over here getting leveled by an echo. It’s strange what grief attaches itself to. Not the obvious big stuff all the time. Not the anniversary dates or the cemetery or the holidays. Sometimes it’s just a laugh in the next room that sounds enough like the person you lost to make the whole world tilt sideways. People think grief is about memory. It’s not just memory. It’s ambush. It’s being dragged backward against your will by the smallest shit imaginable. And then five seconds later I’m back to helping with homework and finding somebody’s missing shoe like my insides aren’t on fire. That’s the job now. Get wrecked. Keep moving.