A Conversation of Loss

“Why does it hurt so much?”
“Hurt where?”
“Everywhere.”
“Well, if you asked a doctor I guess he would say that it doesn’t really hurt. It’s just your head that makes you think it does.”
“And if I asked you?”
He sighed heavily, dragging his eyes over to meet hers, red and distant, but waiting.
“If you asked me, I’d say it hurts because your heart is hurting. It hurts because a part of yourself, the part that you entrusted to someone else is gone, ripped from its place. I’d say it hurts because something is missing in your soul, and your body wants it back.”
There was silence for some time, as they contemplated the sunset etched across the boundless sky.
“Does it ever stop,” she paused, “the hurt?”
“It doesn’t work like that. It won’t just stop in a week or a month, or even a year. But it gets less.”
“So the pain goes away?”
“No. But one day you’ll realise that the pain you’re feeling now, the raw pain, doesn’t come up when you think of him. And then you’ll see that you can’t recall it, even when your memories of him play through in your head.”
“That’s better than pain though, isn’t it?”
“Maybe, but not really. Because it is in that moment that your most painful discovery will occur. You’ll realise that you have moved forward, and left him behind. Your memories will fade, and soon his face will be nothing more than a passing thought when you see someone with his hair or his eyes, or when you think you hear his laugh. And secretly, that is the worst part of grief, because you have done at that point what you can’t fathom now, getting on with your life, falling in love again, and making new memories, all without him. You’ll know true loneliness then, and the cycle will start anew.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.”
“When?”
“One day, some day…”
He opened his mouth, as if to say more, but instead remained silent and cast his eyes to the starry sky. And there, together but apart, they sat, contemplating all the futures they would live to see, but did not yet understand.