the ghosts we rock to sleep.
Grief is a weird thing. It can be a monster on your shoulder. It can be a friend sitting with you at the table. It can be a memory in a smell—the soft, delicate notes of floral perfume. Grief can find you in the middle of the night as you roll over to go back to sleep. It can even find you in your dreams.
Ashley Poston • The Seven Year Slip
Yet the fundamental loss remains—it doesn’t just dissipate—and, in a strange way, I think it can become a magnet for other losses. We come to see we are all simply creatures carrying around our ever-deepening loss. Small griefs seem to collect around the bigger primary grief. I think this realization allows us to become a true human being.
Amanda Petrusich • Nick Cave on the Fragility of Life
Forgetting is sacred too and necessary, but I don’t understand why yet, not really, not fully, not with the whole chest. I think I want to remember Heaven, but I keep forgetting her. I remember her for 20 minutes each day, but that’s not good enough.