Observer’s Guide to Grief: Tomorrow

Tomorrow
It will have been three hundred and sixty five days
Since your loved one went away.
This is the same as saying
It has been one year
But the larger number feels
More appropriate
As a reflection of your journey
Around the sun without them.

It might even help you to realise
Your heart has beaten around
Forty-Two million times
Since theirs stopped.
Then again, it might not.

You may get
(Or others may gift to you)
An idea that this unwelcome anniversary 
Marks the end of reasonable grief
And it is time to bottle up your teardrops
And store them in the attic.

But if you have yet learned anything
From all of this,
You will know that grief
Is never reasonable
It is a disease without a cure
It may go into a kind of remission
From time to time
But relapse is inevitable.

Be prepared, tomorrow, for an onslaught
Of “On-this-day’s” from Facebook
As it’s cold-hearted algorithms
Assume you want to read again
That message where you told the world
The kidney-punching news. 
As time loops digitally back upon itself
You may wish to reflect upon
How differently, or not, you feel today
Now that however much time you prefer to call it
Has elapsed.

Be kind to yourself
And accept and allow
Anything you feel as undeniably
Valid.

Move on. 
Or don’t.

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This is the fifth — and possibly final — “excerpt” from my so-far nonexistent book, “The Observer’s Guide to Grief”.