During the wake, the women had told her that the grief would subside. Nóra hated them for it. There was a void there, she understood now. How had she lived her whole life and not noticed it! A sea of loneliness that sang a siren song to the bereaved. What a gentle thing it would be to give into it and drown. What an easy keel into the abyss. How qu

Channelling my energy into school work, I carried my grief around like a grenade. The fury went inwards and eventually subsided. It takes perhaps ten years for grief to lose its raw edge.

so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.