It’s been a month since D died.

Actually, more than a month. One month, ten days by the time this posts.

I feel each day, the passage of it.

Grief is a crazy kind of thing, a nagging, gnawing, annoying one and I hate it.

There are mornings when I wake up and it’s like…I don’t remember.  Things feel normal.  Then reality crashes into me and I remember and it’s like losing him all over again.  For thirty-nine years, I had this annoying, adorable little brother D.  For forty-one years, I’ve had this annoying, less adorable, straight-laced older brother S and for thirty seven years, another adorable, annoying baby brother DS.

We’ve always been four.  That was what I told my husband the night we were at the hospital waiting to see Dad after his heart attack.

But we’re weren’t four anymore.

There are only three of us now. Because D is gone.

And some mornings, I wake up and it’s like my brain has skipped over that part and I have to remember all over again.

Other days, I wake up sick at heart, my head full of snot (yes, gross), but still…full of snot and tears because I cried half the night.

My bed is the only safe place to cry. My dad is living with us, my niece is living with us. Sometimes D’s youngest is here too.  They can’t go back to the house yet–hard to call the place home because it doesn’t like it can be their home now.

D’s youngest–man…he makes me laugh and reminds me so much of D–he called himself by our last name a few weeks ago and while it seems cute, it’s not.  He’s not part of the family I’ve made with my husband–he’s family, to the bone.  But he’s part of the family my brother created with his wife.  He’s too young, too innocent and for him, those words matter little, but it was another stab in the heart.

Another reminder that D is gone.

It still doesn’t seem real.  I don’t know why.  Nothing but reality could hurt like this. Nothing but reality could bite like this.

But…life goes on.

I’m finally at a point where I can write again.

I started listening to Jeaniene Frost’s Cat & Bones books on audio.  My concentration is too fractured for reading, but I need an escape and audio is good.

I see the end of the tunnel for Kit and Damon’s next book.

I went out with my husband last night…and cried at the table while we were eating out, holding onto his hand.

Grief is an ugly, messy emotion. But we only feel it for those we loved with everything we had in us. Love…that’s another ugly, messy emotion. We forget that sometimes…the underside of love is marred with pain.  There’s nothing to do for this kind of hurt but keep on going, cling to those you love and remember what’s important.

Forget about the petty slights, the petty people…it’s funny how death brings the ugliness and pettiness out of some.  That can’t matter because if we let it, it makes the misery worse, and the misery is enough on its own.

You just take each day. You focus on making sure you’ve got the money for bills, for groceries, you focus on work, you try to sleep.  You do it again the next day, the next…

Sooner or later, enough days pass and maybe the pain will lessen.

That’s all I’m holding out for right now. A day when the pain doesn’t lay me low.