The thing you don't remember between each grief is just how heavy it is. And each one is a different weight as well, because of how you did or didn't know the person. Some skip past like a butterfly - briefly landing before they fly away. I'm writing this the week that Olivia Newton John died, and when I heard I thanked the universe/God/Out There for all the times I watched Grease with my friends growing up, and the fun that we had mucking about doing that. And the butterfly flew on.
Some you aren't sure what to do with, some come and go, like someone on a galloping horses ride. A dear friend of mine passed in early 2020 in very quick unexpected time. She's with me daily, but comes to me in a laugh or someone else's phrase. Some come only in certain seasons; of the year or of your life. Some griefs stack up like horrible building blocks, waiting to fall on you when you do something wrong. Some fill you with rocks, others at last with gratitude: that you had them, that you loved them, that you got to have the privilege of them in your life. That they loved you. One grandmother comes to me in my mothers embrace, the other in the call of geese.
Even the ones you can see coming bring with them a nauseous inevitability. You can't escape, it WILL get you. One way or another you'll be leaning on a wall under a streetlamp heaving up whatever is inside.
And some will be all of these and none of them. Frequently at the same time. But there is always the heaviness. The exhaustion. Some of it comes from the waiting you've had to do. And then the wall of admin that hits when someone actually does die. It feels disproportionately painful that you are faced with all of this when you have the least available mental resources to do anything about it.
So here I am, in the middle of one, trying to get ready for the next one. Because it's coming. And it's already heavy. Everything is rocks. And I am so very, very tired.