She is not forgotten

Sitting in the weak, autumn sun, eating my lunch, I opened Facebook and saw a message from a friend, who had been in her garden and smelled the jasmine my mom gave her to plant. The occasion had been my own daughter's funeral.

And just like that, the old pain rose up in my heart, spilled out of my eyes; a pain so great it felt that my very bones quaked, my poor pressure rose so that My ears could hear nothing, my lungs could not draw breath and my heart quailed. The world seemed, once more, to stop spinning, to implode upon itself.

But like a wave that has crashed retreats back down the shore, the grief receded. And so, now I sit with damp cheeks, damp eyes, a runny nose, a clenched and raw throat, exhausted, yet alive, knowing that life goes on, and so must I.

And that, perhaps, is the hardest thing of all to bear.