The flowers are dying – water them.

No lights are on, but i see two eyes twinkling in the darkness and a faint meow that pulls me out of the daze i’m in. I check my phone and it is 20:38pm. I’ve been lying on the couch in silence since logging off at 6:00pm I sit up abruptly. There is a feeling in the pit of my stomach, a weightless grey mass and suddenly I find myself wanting to cry, but instead nothing comes out. I’m confused. I don’t feel much, I know I should be crying right now but I feel nothing. I look back on the last two months and I notice that i’ve become more withdrawn, and in the quiet of the night I find myself in the foetal position dry eyed with static buzz running through my head. Over coffee my lips part and out comes “I want to go home”, and i shake my head confused because I am home, I am my own home, and I am in my own home. I don’t want to leave the house much, and when I do, I feel a thick sense of relief once I return, finally free from the heaviness of being perceived. I find myself cancelling plans because I feel tired, a tiredness that naps don’t seem to be curing. I sleep for hours to try and fix the constant sleepiness and awake with a mouth that feels filled with cotton wool, my eyes are puffy and my back feels cold – a distant meow and the sound of paws hitting the duvet reminds me that I cannot sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep even though it feels so good. I open up my phone to try and decipher this strange neutral levity and I see a word that I don’t believe in – for myself at least. I can’t be d——d – I’m not sad. I’m not crying. I’m just a little under the weather. It’s just a phase.

A friend calls on FaceTime, she notices once red roses turning brown on the dresser, the petals morphing into dust. “Your flowers are dying – water them” she says. I laugh drily and say I am tired. I will water them another day. The day never comes and I find myself shoving dead roses into a dustbin bag, trying to expertly guide them in to avoid any mess – they never really got to bloom.

I pick up the phone and I drop it. Then I pick it up again and check my sent messages. I don’t want to triple text her – she’s busy, she’ll come back to me when she’s free. I open WhatsApp and I go to dial but I think, no she has her hands full right now and she will ask too many questions that will unsettle me – I don’t want to disturb her. Instead i scroll and scroll and scroll until the feeling subsides and everything feels smoothed over and grey again. Like a polished pebble. Perhaps it is grief. I’ve never been very good at processing loss and I think, no I know, the loss of my Aunt shattered everything for me, the curtain tore from top to bottom and i felt like a foal left in the wilderness to die – every fear of mine came to light, everything I knew felt taken from me. This wasn’t what they said would happen. And so, every Sunday, I get up, I get ready and I don’t go. I don’t go to church because her death changed everything. She did everything right – she was the good and faithful servant. She waited patiently for her dreams to unfold, and they never did because she died. Sometimes i find myself looking at the ceiling (God) with such an uncontrollable anger that it actually shakes me out of the grey i’ve been residing in – my impassive face streaked with red as it turns into a snarl. A deep inky swirling anger and this injustice. Her death for me, was the first time i’ve ever really come to grips with the fact that you might not get what you want in life and it shocked me to my very core. She fasted, she prayed, she begged, she stayed pure, she was good – she was a good woman. All she wanted was children to call her own, and it was her undoing and I can’t stop feeling so angry for her. And so if she didn’t get her life’s wishes, who am I – a sinner to think this little life might grant me my heart’s desires. I feel like i’m in a box looking out, biding my time until it is that time so I can ask question after question at the foot of my Father.

Grief feels paralysing – it is quite literally shocking. The death of my Grandmother has stirred up the feelings I’ve held close since 2021, and for whatever reason a Tuesday night at 9pm is when I have chosen to grant myself cathartic relief by way of posting my innermost thoughts to a page on the internet.

Do you know what I think the worst part of grief is? The anger you hold on behalf of the person. The deep seated unshakeable feeling of injustice. It simply isn’t fair. But that’s life isn’t it.

Isn’t it?