On voices and love and death

Yesterday morning I read the most true, touching, heartbreaking thing: The reality that one will never again speak to a deceased parent is actually unfathomable. I don't know how to say this any better than just saying it: It remains that way. Eleven and ten years later, respectively, it is still unfathomable. I don't know what to tell people who have lost parents. It never seems to get easy, but each day it is easier to cope, until one day it is harder. Out of no where, something smacks the face. Grief seems to be like that. Easy, then hard, then easy again. Easy, hard, easier.

One of the things about grief that no one told me was that it is mostly anger. Sadness are just the slices of bread, but anger is the meat. Most of hurt, at least for me, has been in the anger. And it comes raging up at the oddest times. Usually, for me, it is when something good happens or something funny, and I go to call my mom and realize she isn't there. Or my phone rings and the caller ID says, "Grandma," and I smile to myself before I remember that T-Mobile randomly forgets that it has been five years since I changed the name associated with her number. Or on my birthdays, when I wait days to check my voice mails because I know I will only miss the message from my father. And I go from laughter to crying, angry wreck.

Blog posts about grief should have happy endings so I will say the voices of our lost parents are within us. Even after we forget how they sounded, we imagine new sounds to replace the missing ones.