Henry-Cameron Allen
© 26/11/24 All Rights Reserved
They say time heals, but they never tell you how to live in the spaces where your child used to breathe.
Memory ambushes me - sharp as a forgotten photograph. In the social media posts of friends who are the age you would be now, in the songs that still carry your fingerprints, in dreams that blur the lines between what was and what remains. And in my becoming.
You shine alive within me, so visceral I can trace your outline. Some days, your physical absence weighs like gravity itself - a darkness that breathes... that remembers.
My grief is mine alone - a landscape both internal and infinite. From the crushing weight of unmade memories to the moment of breaking through mourning's thick ice,
I am in a constant state of rebirthing mySelf. Discovering horizons I never could have mapped had you stayed.
When someone walks this path beside me, when they speak your name without flinching - no awkward deflections, no nervous subject changes - I feel less like I'm about to fall when grief's abyss emerges from the dust.
Presence whispers that I am still your Papa. Still worthy of love. Still carrying your light through this broken terrain of After.
I don't need soft platitudes or hollow comfort. Just someone willing to weather these microbursts with me, to acknowledge that you were here. That you still matter.
Someone to sit with me in this silent sacred space of remembering. Not to fix what cannot be mended, but to honor this love - still vital, still evolving. To notice that I carry you not as a burden, but as the Light that still guides me.
Presence helps me remember that I am still whole.
Scattered amongst stars and shadows, yes. But burning.
Always burning with gratitude that we once breathed the same air.
Photo credit: Juuso Hämäläinen
Old Man of Storr, Isle of Skye, Scotland
Grief Reimagined. Purpose Empowered.
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