The Unmarked Grave

this may be triggering. its raw grief.

An unmarked grave. A house full of life locked away from me. I can see the house where I sit at his unmarked grave and it’s cruel. Why can I see it but am not allowed in? Why is it trespassing if he was my lifeline, my soul? If his soul is still in there, I need to get to it. I don’t understand how he could be locked in that garage or locked in that house. I guess he isn’t anymore, and I still feel responsible for abandoning him, not being there when they died. So I cling to a location he hated… He hated it here. He hated being trapped in the house. He’s not in that house. He's not wandering around alone with the dust and boxes; his stuff sitting for years, Locked away from me.

With that logic, my Nana must not be in the ground either. They both loved to be outside, to be in the sun with flowers and nature.

It’s almost as if the world gave me two teen parents and also gave me two columns of what I thought was immovable love. But they died. They left, and my light left with them. My light is buried under the grief, and I had to hold it in while others bled at my feet. Not because they asked me to, but because I did not deserve to feel pain when everyone around me had just lost someone. They didn’t realize my back was covered in knives and arrows and rocks and stones.

“I should not have to grimace through my days.”

Trapped deep in my grief, the mention of their names feels offensive to me. You dare remind me they are dead? You dare create flashbacks in my head of a casket and a face that didn’t match.

“Just seconds ago you were here. Just seconds ago…”

I can feel them, like they are alive and well. Then their names ground me in hell, reminding me they are not existing peacefully a call away. They are in the ground. I guess that’s where they would have wanted to be, though. Not necessarily in the ground, but becoming one with nature, being absorbed back into the earth. Our bodies are recyclable, not permanent. But the echo of the mark we leave is. And the mark their love left on me is both my biggest burden and my biggest savior.