One Day At A Time

daywalker v by hannesflo

Somewhere far away, South Iceland

© Ilya Ivanov, July 2022

…

…

“Oh, he’s chewing it, it’ll be smaller.”

“He can’t possibly-”

…

“the funeral isn’t your worst day,”

because you have a bunch of people around you;

making sure you’re okay,

sharing in your grief.

The worst is the week after,

when the quietness sets in,

when you see their unused bed,

the chair they sit in that’s now empty.

Then it’s a little worse a month after,

when you’re trying to move on with life without them.

When your conscious goes from,

“they’re just gone” to “you’re never seeing them again.”

That’s the worst.

The empty spot where they were in your life,

the ache in your heart that makes that emptiness

a huge pit in your stomach.

It just gets worse.

But you learn to live with it.

That pit in your stomach, that ache in your heart,

went to sit outside for awhile and the man himself arrived to greet us